The wife got a hankering for a high mpg car for a commuter and she was thinking Geo, but the only ones we could find were high mileage and high price. Furthermore, I just couldn't see myself in a Geo. Remembering back to my college days, ~30 years ago, my roommate had a Spridget. It was a blast to drive and was easy on the $0.19/gallon gas of the day. So I got the wife looking at Midgets and Sprites. A couple of days later I got an excited phone call, "I found the one I want." She tells me. She had called the seller, and liked what she heard. My car domain site (see my homepage) has all the information provided by the seller, which wasn't much, but since the wife wanted the car, I said "Yes dear!".
The first problem was the car was in Sheboygan, WI and we are in Morgantown, WV, a seperation of ~690 miles. We evaluated several options before deciding on driving to Sheboygan in the wife's Eclipse, loaded with tools and common spares and a repair manual. We drove to Sheboygan on Friday, arriving about 6 pm. That gave us some time to evaluate the car. The seller described the car as "totally pristine", which we found was an optimistic assessment. However, the car is mechanically sound and virtually rust free. So overall we are happy with the decision to purchase. Furthermore, my assessment was the car was safe to drive home!
The next morning we headed out at about 7 AM. There wasn't any reasonable way to avoid downtown Chicago, but how bad could it be on a Saturday morning? Well other than bumper to bumper traffic and truck drivers who do not consider a Midget as an obstacle to a lane change, it wasn't a problem. We drove about 330 miles that day taking in the sites offered by the Amish in Indiana. We stopped for the night in Auburn Indiana. The car did really well, cruising at 65 mph for most of the trip.
The next morning we went to the Auburn, Cord, and Duesenburg museum; really a great show case of cars, etc. After noon we headed home, and arrived about 8 PM. I crused the whole 400 miles with the top down, thank goodness for sun screen. After about 200 miles the temperature gauge stopped working, but we pressed on as the engine had run in the good temperature range for over 500 miles.
Well that's my intro... on to the technical pages to ask about that temperature gauge and other things.
Edited by highhilleer (07/22/08 12:17 PM)
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Bought 79 Midget w/ 20,090 miles. Drove it home - 720 miles in two days. How smart is that?
Great find by the Mrs! Have you let her drive "her" new car yet?! Oh yeah.....post PICS!!
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