Getting ready for snow
Yesterday I decided that I'd better get ready for snow, because November marks the beginning of the snowy season. My thoughts bounced from getting snow tires for the Lightning, to getting a beater car, to getting a new cheap car.
I kept thinking that snow tires on the truck would be the cheapest thing to do, but probably wouldn't really help due to the 450lb/ft of torque coming from the Lightning's engine, combined with the not so helpful 55/45 weight distribution. It's a simple matter to get it sideways in the rain, even when being gentle on the gas. I could only imagine what would happen in the snow, especially trying to go up a hill, of which there are a fair number around here.
Buying a beater car just left me with thoughts of being stranded with no heat in the middle of nowhere. And, let's face it, it's just not me.
I've been seeing a bunch of Ford Focuses (Foci?) around here, and I really like the shape of the 3 door. It was also the winner of Motortrend's test of $20k sport compact cars. If only they hadn't canceled the SVT Focus in 2005. That was what I was thinking I'd really like. It's small, relatively cheap, gets decent gas mileage (even though it requires 91+ octane gas), and definitely has a high "tossable" factor, making it a fun little car. Plus my Ford Lightning has never given me any grief, so another Ford seemed to be a no-brainer. I was thinking that if they still had an SVT Focus, that would be what I would get, but had already decided that I needed to get something else because I didn't believe I could get a SVT Focus.
I found the addresses of the local (if 10+ miles away counts as local) Ford, Subaru, and Dodge dealers so that I could look at the Focus, WRX, and SRT-4 (respectively). I started at the Ford dealer, and to my great surprise, they had two SVT Focuses! A black 5 door model outside, and a red 3 door model on the showroom floor. I liked the fact that the black one was about $800 cheaper than the red one, had 7 spoke wheels instead of 15 spoke wheels, and had cloth seats with leather side bolsters instead of all leather seats. But it was a 5 door. After waiting about 20 minutes for a customer to leave so we could get the black one out of its parking space, we took it for a spin.
It didn't seem to have the claimed 170hp, especially off the line. It completely lacked any sort of usable low end. I was expecting more, but chalked it up to having driven the Lightning for so long. It handled well, and rode well over the pockmarked Minnesota streets. It was a contender at about $17,600.
I went off to look at WRXes but couldn't find a salesman to help me out, and kept thinking about how great the Focus felt. It's shifter is fantastic, and its gearbox is as smooth as silk, even when selecting first at 5mph. Plus it's a 6-speed. So after walking around the Subaru lot for 15 minutes, all the while thinking about the Focus, I decided to not even look for an SRT-4 (let's face, Dodge doesn't have the best reliability reputation, and the SRT-4's engine has to be pushed to its limits) and to get the red 3 door Focus.
Before buying it, they got it out of the showroom so I could test drive it. Too bad I couldn't drive it out of there. I've always wanted to drive a car inside a building and around cubicles. We took it on the same route as before, but I could tell as I was pulling out of the parking lot that this one was much closer to its claimed 170hp. And it had decent low end grunt. Much better. This little guy will chirp the tires going into second gear and seems to pull much more urgently than the 5 door. Something was definitely wrong with the 5 door, and't is not because the 5 door weighs much more. My guess is a mouse in the intake. :-)
Since I was paying cash, and this was a no-haggle dealership, the only thing I had to do was fend off the undercoating guy and decline the extended warranty (which you can usually buy later, before the original warranty is up, if you change your mind). They quoted me just under $2k for genuine SVT wheels ($300 each) and Bridgestone's Blizzak WS 50 snow tires mounted and balanced. They claimed that they sell the wheels and tires without any markup and that this would be the price anywhere. That seemed a bit high for the tires, especially since I'd been looking at snow tires for the truck and they weren't even close to the $169 a tire that the dealership wanted. I passed on the tires and wheels since the price wouldn't change if I decided to get them later. Later that night I checked on prices of wheels and tires on TireRack.com. I found that TireRack carries the same Ford SVT wheels, and sells them for only $125! No markup my ass. Blizzaks are only $127 at TireRack as well, with free mounting, balancing, and valve stems. Total price with shipping is just over $1k. Much better.
I left the dealership driving the Focus, following my salesman driving my Lightning. I told him he shouldn't go easy on the Lightning; that this was probably going to be the only time someone let him drive their Lightning hard. He was hesitant, but I promised to yell at him if he didn't at least try to drive it quickly. Even with him being gentle, when leaving the parking lot I had to flog the little Focus like a rented mule to stay on the tail of the Lightning (he knew the way to the freeway, I'm still trying to build up my mental map of the area). At a light near the house (on a 50mph 4 lane road) we did a little drag race. I got off the line faster, but I could hear the Lightning's supercharger whining just outside my window, and when I was a little gentle on the 1-2 shift, he blew on by. Nice. :-)
I drove him back to the dealership, shook everyone's hand multiple times and then left, wondering where I was going to park the Lightning and the Focus. I drove to Hudson, the town where I work, to see if a coworker was in the office. I was going to show off the Focus and see if he would be up for helping me move the Lightning to the storage yard where I have my trailer. He wasn't in, and just before I left to walk down to get some dinner at a local restaurant, my phone rang. It was the salesman calling to say that they had forgotten to switch the alarm from dealer mode to consumer mode. The car was going to become a pumpkin at 9pm. Ooops.
The dealership had closed at 6pm, and it was now 6:50. They're not open on Sundays. They were going to stay late, waiting for me to get back there so they could fix the alarm. I hightailed it back there, and once there it took them only a couple of minutes to reset the alarm. I got a free soda and future oil change out of the inconvenience, not that it mattered to me, I was driving around anyway.
Turns out that my driveway is just long enough to fit the Lightning and the Focus end to end, so maybe that's how I'll leave things for a while. That saves $10 a month in storage fees at least. Hopefully the apartment managers won't care (they better not, this place has woefully inadequate parking).
Pictures of my new Focus are here (served on my local PC so they're a bit slow, and taken with my phone's camera, so they're not the best quality).
I kept thinking that snow tires on the truck would be the cheapest thing to do, but probably wouldn't really help due to the 450lb/ft of torque coming from the Lightning's engine, combined with the not so helpful 55/45 weight distribution. It's a simple matter to get it sideways in the rain, even when being gentle on the gas. I could only imagine what would happen in the snow, especially trying to go up a hill, of which there are a fair number around here.
Buying a beater car just left me with thoughts of being stranded with no heat in the middle of nowhere. And, let's face it, it's just not me.
I've been seeing a bunch of Ford Focuses (Foci?) around here, and I really like the shape of the 3 door. It was also the winner of Motortrend's test of $20k sport compact cars. If only they hadn't canceled the SVT Focus in 2005. That was what I was thinking I'd really like. It's small, relatively cheap, gets decent gas mileage (even though it requires 91+ octane gas), and definitely has a high "tossable" factor, making it a fun little car. Plus my Ford Lightning has never given me any grief, so another Ford seemed to be a no-brainer. I was thinking that if they still had an SVT Focus, that would be what I would get, but had already decided that I needed to get something else because I didn't believe I could get a SVT Focus.
I found the addresses of the local (if 10+ miles away counts as local) Ford, Subaru, and Dodge dealers so that I could look at the Focus, WRX, and SRT-4 (respectively). I started at the Ford dealer, and to my great surprise, they had two SVT Focuses! A black 5 door model outside, and a red 3 door model on the showroom floor. I liked the fact that the black one was about $800 cheaper than the red one, had 7 spoke wheels instead of 15 spoke wheels, and had cloth seats with leather side bolsters instead of all leather seats. But it was a 5 door. After waiting about 20 minutes for a customer to leave so we could get the black one out of its parking space, we took it for a spin.
It didn't seem to have the claimed 170hp, especially off the line. It completely lacked any sort of usable low end. I was expecting more, but chalked it up to having driven the Lightning for so long. It handled well, and rode well over the pockmarked Minnesota streets. It was a contender at about $17,600.
I went off to look at WRXes but couldn't find a salesman to help me out, and kept thinking about how great the Focus felt. It's shifter is fantastic, and its gearbox is as smooth as silk, even when selecting first at 5mph. Plus it's a 6-speed. So after walking around the Subaru lot for 15 minutes, all the while thinking about the Focus, I decided to not even look for an SRT-4 (let's face, Dodge doesn't have the best reliability reputation, and the SRT-4's engine has to be pushed to its limits) and to get the red 3 door Focus.
Before buying it, they got it out of the showroom so I could test drive it. Too bad I couldn't drive it out of there. I've always wanted to drive a car inside a building and around cubicles. We took it on the same route as before, but I could tell as I was pulling out of the parking lot that this one was much closer to its claimed 170hp. And it had decent low end grunt. Much better. This little guy will chirp the tires going into second gear and seems to pull much more urgently than the 5 door. Something was definitely wrong with the 5 door, and't is not because the 5 door weighs much more. My guess is a mouse in the intake. :-)
Since I was paying cash, and this was a no-haggle dealership, the only thing I had to do was fend off the undercoating guy and decline the extended warranty (which you can usually buy later, before the original warranty is up, if you change your mind). They quoted me just under $2k for genuine SVT wheels ($300 each) and Bridgestone's Blizzak WS 50 snow tires mounted and balanced. They claimed that they sell the wheels and tires without any markup and that this would be the price anywhere. That seemed a bit high for the tires, especially since I'd been looking at snow tires for the truck and they weren't even close to the $169 a tire that the dealership wanted. I passed on the tires and wheels since the price wouldn't change if I decided to get them later. Later that night I checked on prices of wheels and tires on TireRack.com. I found that TireRack carries the same Ford SVT wheels, and sells them for only $125! No markup my ass. Blizzaks are only $127 at TireRack as well, with free mounting, balancing, and valve stems. Total price with shipping is just over $1k. Much better.
I left the dealership driving the Focus, following my salesman driving my Lightning. I told him he shouldn't go easy on the Lightning; that this was probably going to be the only time someone let him drive their Lightning hard. He was hesitant, but I promised to yell at him if he didn't at least try to drive it quickly. Even with him being gentle, when leaving the parking lot I had to flog the little Focus like a rented mule to stay on the tail of the Lightning (he knew the way to the freeway, I'm still trying to build up my mental map of the area). At a light near the house (on a 50mph 4 lane road) we did a little drag race. I got off the line faster, but I could hear the Lightning's supercharger whining just outside my window, and when I was a little gentle on the 1-2 shift, he blew on by. Nice. :-)
I drove him back to the dealership, shook everyone's hand multiple times and then left, wondering where I was going to park the Lightning and the Focus. I drove to Hudson, the town where I work, to see if a coworker was in the office. I was going to show off the Focus and see if he would be up for helping me move the Lightning to the storage yard where I have my trailer. He wasn't in, and just before I left to walk down to get some dinner at a local restaurant, my phone rang. It was the salesman calling to say that they had forgotten to switch the alarm from dealer mode to consumer mode. The car was going to become a pumpkin at 9pm. Ooops.
The dealership had closed at 6pm, and it was now 6:50. They're not open on Sundays. They were going to stay late, waiting for me to get back there so they could fix the alarm. I hightailed it back there, and once there it took them only a couple of minutes to reset the alarm. I got a free soda and future oil change out of the inconvenience, not that it mattered to me, I was driving around anyway.
Turns out that my driveway is just long enough to fit the Lightning and the Focus end to end, so maybe that's how I'll leave things for a while. That saves $10 a month in storage fees at least. Hopefully the apartment managers won't care (they better not, this place has woefully inadequate parking).
Pictures of my new Focus are here (served on my local PC so they're a bit slow, and taken with my phone's camera, so they're not the best quality).
posted by Mark at 7:07 AM
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