free money...

about a year ago i read about a mercedes-built minicar that has been running around the streets of europe for several years and that they were prepping for the US market...

ordinarily, a car not much bigger than a golf cart wouldn't have me looking twice due to the inherent safety issues...but this mercedes designed "smart" car was built like a roll cage with multiple airbags, etc., and tested very well by the crash-safety folks...and it comes loaded with a/c, cd player, skid-control, and a lot of other equipment not usually found on a minicar small enough to park sideways in a standard parking space...and with a 3-cylinder engine that pushes it up to 90 mph while still getting mileage in the forties, it looked like a good prospect to pull behind our motorhome; most cars with automatic trans. have to be pulled on a trailer or dolly, but this one was designed to be pulled with all four wheels on the ground.

the program called for placing a $99 deposit, ordering the car the way you want it, and when they're available, they contact you...so since the deposit was refundable if i changed my mind, i ordered one...and i admit that the prospect of something new and different (think new beetle and mini-cooper) generating a profit due to supply/demand did occur to me.

well, then the price of gas started shooting up instead of just climbing, and we've about decided not to use the motorhome this summer for a long trip as planned...it holds about seventy gallons, and with the ford v-10 engine gets seven or eight mpg...every hundred miles would cost about $60 in gas alone...yikes.

so when the dealer in atlanta contacted us last week to let us know our all-black smart car was being delivered, i checked out ebay to see if the prius crowd et al would pay a premium to get the little car now instead of getting on the year-plus waiting list.

turns out it should bring 2500-3000 over our actual cost after including everything, so what the hell, instead of cancelling my order and getting my $99 back (and letting somebody else buy the car), i'm driving up this week to pick it up and flip it on ebay to make a buck...

i've never been one to leave free money on the table, and if i decide i want a smart for myself i can wait till the fever dies down bringing the price down with it as the supply catches up...in the meantime, i wish i'd of reserved a dozen of 'em...i'll take all those yuppies' dollars that i can get!