Here we go!

All right the prepartion time for Team Merkin has come to pass. I have a willing team member. The car has been located and purchased. Registration is complete and the entrance fee has been paid.

The first hurdle to overcome was finding a willing team member. Dave, who you may be hearing from soon, is a whiz when it comes to cars. He has been competing in the Grassroots Motorsports (GRM) Challenges since 2002, has built a rotary powered Locost and is very well respected person in the RX-7 community. Between the two of us (well mostly him) we can either fix about anything or screw it up so bad that it probably shouldn't have been fixed in the first place.

I can't remember if we were driving to or from the Grassroots Motorsports $2006 Challenge (My 3rd trip down, his 5th). I can't remember the exact flow of the conversation, but I think we were talking about the One Lap of America and how we would like to do it, but right now it would be a challenge in both the time and money expense. I brought up how I wanted to do this thing called the BABErally this year, but I was unable to do it since I was in the middle of moving during the '06 BABErally. I asked him if he wanted to give it a shot and he said sure.

Finding the car in and of itself was a bit of a challenge. This was mainly due to some of the requirements I had for the car. First, the car had to be mostly safe i.e., all seatbelts must be there. Second the car had to be able to move under its own power. Neither Dave nor I wanted to spend time replacing engines, headgaskets or any other major repairs. We both have to much other projects consuming our time. We wanted this "competition" to be fun and free of any of the last minute emergencies. I spent a lot of time perusing eBay. The problem with eBay is that people that are willing to sell a car for $250 don't seem to list them there. My theory is that eBay charges too much to list a car and there are a lot of people trying to scam sellers with cashier check scams. I also looked through craigslist quite a bit, but I wasn't having much luck there either.

Finally I saw this thread on www.streetcarforums.com. This thread does have some bad language in it from yours truly (LOHAN) but, hey some people were trying to snag the car. You'll notice that the car didn't start at a price of $250. However, my strategy was to make a $250 offer on any potential car I saw. I would explain to the seller that I am not a low-baller but I am competing in the BABErally and that the car had to be less than $250. Basically, here is how the conversation went in the private messenges:

Quote:

Originally Posted by LOHAN

Ask your buddy if he would take $250 for it. I'm not lowballing. I am looking for a car to compete in the BABErally with. You are only allowed to spend $250 on the car.

No, I know he wants to get more money than that out of it. Its worth 400 to 500 because you save that much in gas in a year, but I know that is not what you want it for. It would probably be good for the rally or whatever. In the last year or so, he has put about 350 in maintenance in it because he had to get new axles for it. Whats cool about this turd, is everyting is really cheap to replace, so he got a lot for his $350. I will let him know about the offer, but he has already been offered more.

Quote:

Originally Posted by LOHAN

No worries man. I knew it was a shot in the dark, but I thought I would throw it out there. Thanks!

Quote:

Originally Posted by fatkid

If you are still interested at this point I will let it go at your offered amount of $250 just to clear some space in the drive way. I have one other person who offered a slight bit more but I don't think he is going to pull through. Do you have cash available?

Quote:

Originally Posted by LOHAN

Just wanted to let you know that if need be I can have a friend of mine up there pay you and pick up the car. You do have the title right?

Thanks!

Title in hand, at this point I was hoping that letting it go this cheap would mean it would be gone this week. I would really like to have it picked up asap, It can be picked up where I work in Knoxville. I have the title in hand and ready to sign over. Let me know if you are serious and when someone is able to take it off my hands, too many cars in the driveway. If you want to you can call me on my cell phone at 865 --- ----, Thanks, Travis

Dave picked up the car this past Saturday and said that overall it runs pretty well. We will probably do some light maintenance on it. We need to decide if we want to register and insure the car in SC or TN.

So this is where Team Merkin stands right now. I am going to try to add dave as a member to this Blog so he can post as well. I will also try to get some additional pictures of the Festivus.