Hey Allison,
Thanks for the reply and information on your car. I look forward to catching a
glimpse of you, Josh and your car @ one of the SFR events soon.
The ACR appears to be the sport/practicality value for me. There were also
three
ACRs when CarsDirect.com found when I made my inquiry, all of them with Driver
Conveyance Package & side airbags @ $14,695 before tax including 7 year/100,000
mile
warrantee (assuming you purchase before April 1).
How'd you come up with the VIN?
Barry - http://www.4d-sport.com
Allison Coates wrote:
> i'm the owner of the neon acr '02 that races in sfrscca.
> i can't say enough fantastic things about my car,
> so this is a shameless plug for it.
>
> i bought the car in october,
> during the fantastic rounds of financing that were going on.
> in my case, i specifcally bought the car to start auto-xing it.
> i'd been interested in auto-xing, but hadn't done it yet.
> i also ride motorcycles as well as drive cars but wanted a different
> less deadly thrill...
> i needed a new dependable car that i could afford as a grad
> student and would still have a blast driving.
> i'd read about the car on autoweek and in other places, so i knew what i
>wanted.
> in fact, i didn't look to buy any other car, just that one.
> the only drawback was that it had 4 doors.
> this scared me-- if *i'd* buy a 4-door car, what next?!?!?
>
> i've gotten over that.
>
> It turned out that there were a total of 3 ACRs in
> CA when i went shopping for one; this was the only one that didn't
> have A/C, a radio, etc.
> The others had the more typical "comfort" features a normal car has.
> I live in berkeley, and I had the neatest experience buying it
> over the phone from the Central Valley.
> I called up, told them the VIN number of the car i wanted,
> and told them what i'd pay, and they agreed in under 5 minutes,
> no negotiating.
> they sent me the paperwork the next day.
> (the demand for cars without stereos and A/C must be pretty low :) )
>
> i got it out the door with tax and license for under 16k.
> it's clearly a fantastic value for that.
>
> i'm still waiting to see about reliability,
> but i've had no problems with it so far.
>
> re: the reason we did so well last auto-x:
> i think you'll see the best performance out of it
> by watching josh drive :) and that would translate to any other car too.
>
> Part of the reason we did so well in the rain was
> a. brand new stock tires
> and
> b. traction control.
>
> in the rain, josh in particular wasn't afraid to push it as hard as possible.
> but a lot of that is josh. he's aggressive as all hell, and
> autocrossed twice in a previous car.
> (he needs to learn to be "slow-in",
> unlike me, who is apparently smooth
> but not yet willing to make my stomach lurch
> until the third time on the track, usually. :)
> (I just started with race 2 this season.)
>
> josh used to drive a little porsche 944,
> and he claims my car handles a whole-lot-better.
> it certainly weighs a lot less.
> i'm thrilled with it driving down grizzly peak rd,
> where it seems to throttle steer So Naturally.
> for my point of view,
> there's almost no perceptible understeer, and no oversteer.
> the suspension is tight as a drum, and feels wonderful.
> i can't tell you what the shocks are,
> i can just say that they do critical damping,
> with no sloshing at all.
> there's limited body roll on the car, too,
>
> and the car is happy accelerating to 70 mph in 3rd
> gear to get on the highway.
> (i guess that's what a 150 hp car weighing 1 ton buys you!)
>
> well,
> there's the shameless plug.
> but i bet part of the performance was the driver--
> and hopefully, in the near future, due to 2 drivers!
>
> any more questions,
> email me.
> and if someone tells me how many different drivers you can have per
> car at a race, i'm sure we can finagle a ride for you..
>
> --Allison
>
> ps. i read the digest version of the mailing list,
> so i'm not good at timely reponses on the list,
> but i get there eventually.
|