Good-Bye Mustang

Last September, we took our Ford Mustang GT convertible (e.g. the "the MONSTER") to Carmax for an estimate of how much we could get if we sold it. They offered $24,000. I wanted more, so we didn't take the offer. Besides, we weren't sure when we were going to get the Mustang's replacement, a Smart car.


Before that, in August, I had signed up with Smart for $99 to get on the waiting list to get a car when they came to the U.S., projected to be January of 2008. Sure enough, the dealers opened and cars began to be delivered in January. A co-worker's sister just took delivery of hers. Naturally, we were expecting that, since the cars were now arriving, we'd get ours soon too.

No such luck. Two weeks ago, we finally got an email from Smart asking us to "convert our reservation into an order," which we did. We were expecting that one. We chose the convertible, the Smart For Two Cabriolet, in yellow.

But last week I get another email from them, with a link to a Delivery Date Estimator. Oh boy! Here we go! We went thru that process to learn that our Delivery Date is not until OCTOBER -DECEMBER. Geez! Seven to nine more months?! I did NOT expect THAT.

Smart is accepting trade-ins for the Smart car. No telling how much we'd get for the MONSTER. I didn't really want to keep the MONSTER for another seven to nine months, so we went back to Carmax and sold it on Saturday.

Good-bye Mustang.

Good-bye 12MPG.

Hello, Buddy!

Just a slight adaptation will be in order.

The plan WAS to wait till the Smart car was ready, trade in the MONSTER for it, and with the (expected) extra cash left over, buy a Scooter and two bicycles. Well, with the MONSTER now gone, I'm going to go ahead and get a Scooter (probably the Genuine Scooter Company's "Buddy 125cc,") and start driving that back and forth to work.

Did some math and determined that, using $3/gallon for gas as a benchmark, and a grueling three-mile round-trip:

1. Round-trip to/from work cost me $0.75 in gas/day using the Mustang.
2. Round-trip in the Smart car will cost about $0.23/day.
3. Round-trip on the Buddy 125 will cost about $0.07/day.
4. Round-trip taking the Metro bus runs $2.00/day.
5. Round-trip riding a bike or walking costs time and sweat.


Looking at those figures in pennies, it doesn't seem like that much of a savings. Looking in percentages, the Buddy 125 will cost only 10% as much as I pay now in gas, and the Smart car will cost about 30% of current gas costs. In other words, a savings of 90% and 70%, respectively, on gasoline. Pretty significant.

I'm going to miss the MONSTER on those cool mornings when I could drop the top, crank up the heat and the tunes and blast my way to work. But I had it for two years and it was a lot of fun. Wasteful, but a lot of fun. I hope everyone gets the chance to splurge a little now and then, without going too deeply in debt. What are we livin' for again? Hmmm...

Now, it's time to be a little more responsible. Hey, better late than never.