I miss it (but I'm still glad I sold it)

I've always liked owning interesting cars - not necessarily the fastest one (although I like that), but at least the rarest, or the best color, or the least likely one to be seen on the road every day. Stick shifting is pretty much mandatory, because let's face it, it's cooler. I really let down the side by getting a beige automatic SUV in a moment of new-parent insanity, but right now I have a stick-shift Outback in a weird color, which feels a lot more "me."

Lauren and I used to have a car we really loved though - when we moved back from California we bought a used Audi A4 Avant 1.8T Quattro wagon. It was a beautiful car. It was just off-lease, and it had a stick shift, a turbo engine, and a factory subwoofer. It looked great but it was kind of slow. I harbored dreams of chipping it out to three-hundred horsepower and dropping it down on big rims, but instead we decided to buy a house (of course, the rims might have better resale value at this point). We loved, loved, loved that car, but even as a wagon it was a little small and it had expensive maintenance issues.

As sad as I was to sell, I was happy it went to someone who could not only appreciate it, but could also work on it, because he worked for Steve's European Automotive, which specialized in repairing and realizing performance gains in VW and Audi cars. Not only did he drop in the car down on the pavement where it belonged in the first place, he chipped it out and put big wheels on it. I know this because he just sent me some pictures -



The best part, though? It's a track car now! The pictures were taken at Waterford, where I am told the car performed very credibly this weekend.



So there you go - I had the right idea, just not the will to make it happen. C'est la vie; I'm just happy it's in a good home. Makes me wonder how the Integra's doing....