Major Upgrade
06-19-10, 07:02 PM
#1
Major Upgrade
Cliff Notes: 10 month search for a new car for my wife finally ended. She went from a 01 Civic to what is posted below in the pictures. I spent most of the day detailing and installing 6000k HIDs.
So after almost a year of searching we finally found my wife a new car. She drove everything from Hybrids (Prius/Insight) to SUV/Crossovers (RX330/Ford Edge) to entry level Lux (A4/TL/GS), I think in total she drove 10 different cars. At one point we did a 24hr test drive in an Edge Sport looked great, handle ok even with the 22' sport wheels but was very cheap inside. Ford missed the boat on some of the interior pieces, the door panels looked like they came out of Focus, not what you'd expect from a 40k vehicle. I'm glade that we did the 24hr because then she saw past the shinny blue paint and bling wheels and saw it for what it really was (with some outside influence). She then came close to either a new Ford Fusion Sport or a CPO Audi A4. She really liked the drive and feel of the A4 but was turned off by the coating on the switches peeling off. Personally I really wanted her to get a 3GS, but didn't want to push her to much into one.
Well in March the hunt for a car started to wear on her and she was over the whole deal, figure we started looking at cars in August. She got to the point were she said just find me something. Well this whole time I had been looking at the dealer auctions for a 06 GS300 for her, but couldn't find one with the options and color choices she liked, Black or Gray interior and had to be Pearl White, Matador Red, Smokey Granite or Silver in that order. An upside to the long search was her budget had increase since she kept saving money (since her Civic was paid off in July she kept making that payment into a savings account as a down payment on the new car). Since the prices of 3GSes started to come down I started to look for a GS350 (more power, upgraded brakes, next gen NAV). We came close to buying a Smokey Granite with Grey Interior and NAV but the deal fell through. Then a couple of weeks ago I noticed that the price on the 450h's had dipped a bit and I thought it was just a fluke. Well last week a Silver/Black 450h with NAV was running through an Orlando online dealer auction so I called my brother and told him to bid on the car, if it got over the number I set to stop bidding. Well he was the only dealer to bid on the car and we won the auction for a great price, about the same as a GS350
.
Over all the car is good condition but needed a good exterior detail and the front bumper will need to painted in the near future (looking for a Carson kit before I do that). So I spent most of the day today removing tar and attempting to hide/correct what scratches I could. I also had a extra 6000k HID kit so I installed that in the fogs.
For other mods she is all for a new set of wheels since the ones that are on it have seen better days, driver must have parked by feel. Along with the new wheels will come a drop, but all of this is a few months out.
Ok I'll stop rambling, on to the pics...
Oh two last things, I had the windows tinted at 15% and this thing is quick
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So after almost a year of searching we finally found my wife a new car. She drove everything from Hybrids (Prius/Insight) to SUV/Crossovers (RX330/Ford Edge) to entry level Lux (A4/TL/GS), I think in total she drove 10 different cars. At one point we did a 24hr test drive in an Edge Sport looked great, handle ok even with the 22' sport wheels but was very cheap inside. Ford missed the boat on some of the interior pieces, the door panels looked like they came out of Focus, not what you'd expect from a 40k vehicle. I'm glade that we did the 24hr because then she saw past the shinny blue paint and bling wheels and saw it for what it really was (with some outside influence). She then came close to either a new Ford Fusion Sport or a CPO Audi A4. She really liked the drive and feel of the A4 but was turned off by the coating on the switches peeling off. Personally I really wanted her to get a 3GS, but didn't want to push her to much into one.
Well in March the hunt for a car started to wear on her and she was over the whole deal, figure we started looking at cars in August. She got to the point were she said just find me something. Well this whole time I had been looking at the dealer auctions for a 06 GS300 for her, but couldn't find one with the options and color choices she liked, Black or Gray interior and had to be Pearl White, Matador Red, Smokey Granite or Silver in that order. An upside to the long search was her budget had increase since she kept saving money (since her Civic was paid off in July she kept making that payment into a savings account as a down payment on the new car). Since the prices of 3GSes started to come down I started to look for a GS350 (more power, upgraded brakes, next gen NAV). We came close to buying a Smokey Granite with Grey Interior and NAV but the deal fell through. Then a couple of weeks ago I noticed that the price on the 450h's had dipped a bit and I thought it was just a fluke. Well last week a Silver/Black 450h with NAV was running through an Orlando online dealer auction so I called my brother and told him to bid on the car, if it got over the number I set to stop bidding. Well he was the only dealer to bid on the car and we won the auction for a great price, about the same as a GS350
. Over all the car is good condition but needed a good exterior detail and the front bumper will need to painted in the near future (looking for a Carson kit before I do that). So I spent most of the day today removing tar and attempting to hide/correct what scratches I could. I also had a extra 6000k HID kit so I installed that in the fogs.
For other mods she is all for a new set of wheels since the ones that are on it have seen better days, driver must have parked by feel. Along with the new wheels will come a drop, but all of this is a few months out.
Ok I'll stop rambling, on to the pics...
Oh two last things, I had the windows tinted at 15% and this thing is quick
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06-19-10, 08:50 PM
#3
Lexus Champion
Looks great. Congrad on a great deal. Did you remove the glare guard in the fog when install the HID?
U have not said how she like/dislike it. Did you surprise her?
U have not said how she like/dislike it. Did you surprise her?
06-19-10, 09:03 PM
#4
Hey what's this about removing the glare guard in the fog? I don't think I did that when I installed my HID fog.
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06-20-10, 05:40 AM
#8
She loves it, she use to drive my IS350 when we first got married and missed the "Zoom" as she called it when the lease was up and we turned it in. Now she's got more then enough power and the family is placing bets on when she'll get her first ticket.
06-20-10, 09:50 PM
#13
Lexus Champion
How much of a difference to removing the glare guard make and do you need to remove the lens cover to do so.
She loves it, she use to drive my IS350 when we first got married and missed the "Zoom" as she called it when the lease was up and we turned it in. Now she's got more then enough power and the family is placing bets on when she'll get her first ticket.
She loves it, she use to drive my IS350 when we first got married and missed the "Zoom" as she called it when the lease was up and we turned it in. Now she's got more then enough power and the family is placing bets on when she'll get her first ticket.
Zoooomm zoooooooommmmmmmmmmmm
hope your place don't have those freakin speed camera.
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