Contents:
1 (This post): Prelude
2: The Feed, er Drive home.
3: The Baseline
4: Big Work Day
5: Electrical Bits (In Full Color!)
It started two weeks ago when I was cleaning up some old agent queries on ebay. I had one titled "Forester XT" that I had created in '06 when I was getting ready to sell my '98 2.5 RS. At that time I ended up with an '04 XS MT5. I put a lot of mile on the XS over the last 5 and half years, and my wife and I agreed that we'd stretch out having just one payment, on her '09 Legacy, for a while longer: until the XS hit the 200k miles mark. So I didn't expect to start shopping until, oh, maybe Thanksgiving, or even New Years.
But coming home from Sno*Drift Rally this year we had an unfortunate encounter with a deer. It didn't do too much damage, headlight, bug deflector, and fender, oh, and a little ripple in the right door skin. We weren't sure insurance would cover it so we started thinking about a replacement. I looked around, thought about what I'd want to drive next. We needed to keep at least one car that could haul stuff around, and that we could take camping. And, of course, we needed a car that we work rallies with.
I just kept coming up empty. Nothing really excited me. The closest I came was the '09/'10 Tacoma Quadcab. But it had it's issues, not the least of which was that it would only *just* fit in the garage. I just kept coming back to, "I really just want an '04 XT this time."
But two weeks ago, fate had me click on that search, and up popped a beautiful 2004 Aspen White XT, MT5, with under 71,000 miles, and very fairly priced. This past weekend we flew down to Dallas, picked it up, and drove it home.
I had help: first of all, I really have to give props to Texas Vehicle Exchange. Stan and Joseph were great to work with. Matt at Auto Critic made the purchase much more comfortable with an extremely thorough and professional inspection.
Next Up: The Drive Home.
1 (This post): Prelude
2: The Feed, er Drive home.
3: The Baseline
4: Big Work Day
5: Electrical Bits (In Full Color!)
It started two weeks ago when I was cleaning up some old agent queries on ebay. I had one titled "Forester XT" that I had created in '06 when I was getting ready to sell my '98 2.5 RS. At that time I ended up with an '04 XS MT5. I put a lot of mile on the XS over the last 5 and half years, and my wife and I agreed that we'd stretch out having just one payment, on her '09 Legacy, for a while longer: until the XS hit the 200k miles mark. So I didn't expect to start shopping until, oh, maybe Thanksgiving, or even New Years.
But coming home from Sno*Drift Rally this year we had an unfortunate encounter with a deer. It didn't do too much damage, headlight, bug deflector, and fender, oh, and a little ripple in the right door skin. We weren't sure insurance would cover it so we started thinking about a replacement. I looked around, thought about what I'd want to drive next. We needed to keep at least one car that could haul stuff around, and that we could take camping. And, of course, we needed a car that we work rallies with.
I just kept coming up empty. Nothing really excited me. The closest I came was the '09/'10 Tacoma Quadcab. But it had it's issues, not the least of which was that it would only *just* fit in the garage. I just kept coming back to, "I really just want an '04 XT this time."
But two weeks ago, fate had me click on that search, and up popped a beautiful 2004 Aspen White XT, MT5, with under 71,000 miles, and very fairly priced. This past weekend we flew down to Dallas, picked it up, and drove it home.
I had help: first of all, I really have to give props to Texas Vehicle Exchange. Stan and Joseph were great to work with. Matt at Auto Critic made the purchase much more comfortable with an extremely thorough and professional inspection.
Next Up: The Drive Home.