I have been wanting a car for a while now. The Bronco gets the job done but I miss driving a compact sedan with a manual. After doing months of research I determined that I like way to many types of cars. There is typically a car from every manufacturer that I thought was sweet. To help narrow the list I came up with the following requirements. The car has to:

• Have a manual transmission
• Be quick, perferrably 0-60 in less than 8 seconds
• Be fun to drive
• Be in my price range (about $4k)
• Get better gas mileage than the Bronco.

That last requirements eliminated the Sherman tank I was thinking about getting but left almost every vehicle in the running. As I started looking at cars more closely I started to focus on the Volkswagen Corrado VR6, Ford Mustang GT 94-98, and the Chevrolet Corvette C3 74-81. I know the corrado was fun to drive but hard to find and parts would be an issue. The Mustang on the other hand was easy to find and parts are plentiful but the car is too common. It lacked the uniquness of the Corrado. The Corvette was relatively easy to find while still being unique, and is an car nut icon. The only problem is that the cheap ones are not very powerful from th efactory (thats why they are cheap) and are not very pratical given seating for only 2 and a trunk with no lid.

Once I narrowed it down to these vehicles I spent about 2 weeks trying to find some in my area for the right price. The corrado was too rare requiring me to drive 100+ miles for a car that "runs but needs work". The mustang was overload, there were too many choices. The corvette was easier to narrow down but after reading more about it I can to the conclusion I actually needed something a little more practical.

In desperation I started browsing the daily craigslist car ads. Each day there were probably 50 cars added to craigslist. When I filtered down to my price range there were still about 40 cars left. Apparently the cheap cars go on craigslist and the pricey ones go on ebay. I came across a bunch of unique cars this way, the most promising being a 94 Saab 9000 Arrow. I knew nothing about saab or what this model was. A quick search on the internet didnt turn up any information until I realized the owner mispelled the model, it was actually Aero (-1 point for craigslist given the lack of accuracy and information on many of their posts).

I went to go see the car. It was beat up pretty badly but got me thinking more about Saabs. I then test drove a 99 Saab 900 but was dissappointed in the feel of the transmission. That particular one also had major turbo problems which didnt help. I went back to the 9000 Aero given its size, engine, and transmission (and of course price). A quick search on Ebay turned one up in PA. 1 day later I own it and am loving it. You can read more about it here.