After 120,000+ track miles on my Lotus Exige, I upgraded to a Radical SR3. (Reason: The Exige was too big and heavy. Reason for the Exige upgrade in 2006: The Miata I was driving was too big and heavy. It’s going to be tough going lighter than the Radical, but it is theoretically possible…) I still had the Exige sitting in the garage and, in theory, I’d be able to drive it when I needed to drive a car. In practice, I ended up driving my F350 back and forth two nights a week where I teach Oracle DBA courses as a way to give back to the community. (The rest of the time I work from my home office.)
Stacey and I decided that it would probably be better for the Exige to go to a new home since we were not really using it anymore. (Stacey daily drives and instructs in a 911). A fellow instructor purchased it, fixed it up a bit and turned it over to someone else. He already had an Exige that he tracked quite a bit and built a few times over, so he had the experience to fix my old car up. It’s nice to know that someone else is using the Exige as it is a truly great car.
However, this meant that I had no choice but to drive the F350 around. It’s an old truck (year 2000) with a lot of miles (190K+) which really isn’t that big of a deal to me. However it is a long bed/dually, so it is not that fun to park. I decided that I should get another car just to drive around in. The smart choice would have been to pick up an old Honda Civic or something for a few K. Who really wants to be smart though…
Enter another track friend, Mark. Mark had a bit of a car problem (too many cars, according to his wife at least) and he had a solution to my dilemma:
That’s a number’s matching, 6.6L 1979 Bluebird Trans Am with a four-speed.
After getting approval from Stacey that this would be OK, Mark and I traded my cash for his car.
It’s been a bit of an adventure driving around in a 40 year old car, but it’s been fun.
I just had the original(!) driver’s seat cushions replaced with new foam by Nikito’s Upholstery here in North West Austin, and I’m about to go put the seat back in and take her for a drive.
Cars and Code 
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