I finally pulled the trigger on upgrading my sports car for some 2026 summer fun. It’s funny how car deals sometimes come together – this one was especially fast & favorable!
A friend and I were at the PGA Golf Super Store looking at golf clubs a couple nights ago. He noticed that I had driven my BMW Z4 over to the store and then mentioned that his neighbor was getting a new Corvette this week – trading in an older one. I’ve had only looked at Corvettes on line, but he said he would ask his neighbor if I could have a look at it before it was gone.
The next day, he sent me some pictures he took of his neighbor’s car – a candy-apple red, 2024 Corvette Stingray 2LT coupe. It was almost exactly what I would have put together – options, upgrades, and color. Less than 10K miles and kept in meticulous shape. The neighbor would let me see it, but the catch that it was being traded in at 10am the next morning on another Corvette he had special ordered.
It turns out that the owner of the car and I had a lot in common. We live in the same town, go to the same church, and both worked at the same MegaCorp. We didn’t overlap – as he said his first day there was in 1961! His Dad and son even worked at MegaCorp.
He’s a car guy through-and-through. His job was handling the automotive application of vinyl films in Detroit. That spans everything from the wood-grain panels on your parent’s Ford Country Squire, to the flaming firebird on Burt Reynold’s Trans Am, and the graphics on the current run of Indy 500 Corvette Pace Cars. He even helped start our local Corvette Owner’s Association 40+ years ago.
He called his dealer 15 minutes after I told him I was interested and they arranged a deal where they bought the car from him and then sold it immediately to me. I got the trade-in price plus $500 to the dealer to handle the paperwork & administrivia.
He was buying his 6th (!) Corvette and trading it into them helped offset the purchase price of the new one – meaning he then saved $$$ on the steep MN sales tax (6.875% + fees). I also worked with the dealer to trade in my 2013 BMW Z4 and also saved on my sales tax. Altogether, I saved more than 5-figures on the purchase and got a lot of upgraded features.
I was amazed that it took just 4 phone calls to arrange everything. A call to the dealer, a quick bank funds transfer from our brokerage, and a switch of our the car insurance. I couldn’t believe how smooth it went. I didn’t have any plan to even look at a new car right now and 24 hours later, a completely different red sports car is sitting in my garage, ready for a summer of sunny, Stingray fun!
Any fun new cars in your summer plans?
I’ll miss my trusty BMW roadster … I had it for almost the whole 10 years I’ve been retired!
Images: MrFireStation.com (c)
MrFireStation 
Congratulations on your new purchase. Wonder if Vette drivers still flash each other the V sign when they pass. Sounds like you found yourself a new club to participate in.
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I recall riding in my cousin Gary’s Corvette in Pittsburgh when I was a little kid in the 1970s and he exchanged waves with another Corvette driver. I thought that was SO cool 😎. I get lots of Jeep waves in my Rubicon. I like that.
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Hopefully your first year of Vette ownership is less eventful than mine. I bought mine when I just graduated from college after moving to Saint Louis. Without knowing it, I bought the car from a local Mafioso’s son. The family name was associated with car bombing in St. Louis. This brought all sort of unwanted attention from the police.
During one of the first mornings of ownership, I was driving across the street to my job. A cop pulled me over because I didn’t have a City Sticker. I told the officer that I checked and my townhouse was not in city limits. He gave me the ticket anyway. I told him, “métete el boleto por el culo”. He arrested me and took me into the police station. His Sergent asked me what arrested me for and the officer told his Sergent, “he said something to me.” Sergent: “What did he say?” Officer: “I don’t know but don’t like the way it sounded.” The had to release me and the ticket got dismissed. By the way, the English translation for the Spanish directive is “stick the ticket up your ass.”
During that first year I raked up seven speeding tickets. They were all crap tickets, nothing exciting, with a typical ticket being for driving 31 MPH in a 25 MPH zone. The same street would be 40 MPH in the People’s Republic, and they won’t pull you over if you keep it under 50. I was worried about losing my license. One of my coworkers told me I need to speak with Eric who was an attorney who was also on the board of the electronics startup I worked at. After meeting with Eric, he asked me to give him $200 to take care of everything. I asked him if I need to come to court or anything. He replied, “No, I will make all this go away.”
Eric care of all the tickets except for one the was too fresh maybe. The next time I pulled over for driving over 30 MPH, the officer found there was a warrant out for my arrest because of an unpaid ticket. I got to make my one call from jail, and it was to Eric of course and I told him, “I am holding up my trousers with one hand, and my shoes keep falling off.” Eric told me to wait ten minutes and then “tell the officer that you have never had a ticket in your life and that he needs to recheck my driving record.” The officer was white as ghost after rechecking and had to release me. My attorney obviously had access to a corrupt person with computer access to whatever system tickets are tracked on. I justify as the way I got rid of the tickets was as bogus as the way I got the tickets. By the way, I have had a great non-eventful driving record since moving to the People’s Republic.
Of course, you background checked that the person you bought the car from was not in the Mafia and a car bomber? The Minnesota equivalent to Eric would be putting a Somali Flag Sticker on your rear window.
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Wow, that is quite a crazy experience!
I didn’t realize there was a big Italian mafioso in St. Louis of all places. Perhaps they moved down from Chicago.
The guy, I bought it from checks out. He even belongs to our church choir!
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No cars for me in my summer plans. I am too utilitarian in my view of cars. Nice to look at but I only need something to get me from point A to B, but there is a shop two blocks away that is a known Porsche mechanical shop and they always have some beauties in the lot. We had a Ferrari show in town last Sunday, hundreds of wonderful machines.
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California has some beautiful cars, for sure. Our town in Florida has a big exotic car festival in the spring.
Perhaps surprisingly, I used to have a very utilitarian view of cars, too. Drove a used Toyota Corolla to my job at MegaCorp until I made Director.
We bought a used BMW Z4 on a lark for our 20th anniversary in 2010. Just used it as a weekend “date car”. Upgraded in 2016 at retirement to a more aggressive Z4, and now to this. It’s become an unexpected part of retirement.
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You were correct about the ethnicity of the Mafioso and probably him being an offshoot from Chicago. The Italian neighborhood is called “The Hill”.
However, during the 70s the Irish were mobbed up. Whitey Bulger, an Irish Mob hitman from Boston was captured in Santa Monica in 2011 after being on the lam for 16 years. A Jewish friend told me about his mobster uncle who ran gambling in Sioux City, Iowa. A lot of this has gone away with RICO prosecutions.
RICO prosecutions need to happen again to stop the Somali gangs in Minnesota, and the Russian Armenians, Asian gangs and MS-13 in LA. A month or two ago, the LA Sherriff’s Department arrested 600 human traffickers in Walnut, which is a primarily Asian Community in LA County.
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It seems regardless of your ethnicity, if there is crime to be done, gangs will organize around it. Human nature that must always been kept in check.
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