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July 2002, Philadelphia, PA I'm not a gear head, but I've always admired and appreciated automobiles…and driving….and especially driving a stick shift. I've always felt a fondness for all of the contemporary Porsches, as well as the BMW M3 and the M5. I'm the enthusiast that pauses when I see a performance car with an automatic transmission; the kind of car person who enjoys that the M5 is only offered with a manual transmission. But being the contrarian…I say, happily, to each his own...and driving in the city with a manual can get tedious. For some, a car is a means to an end. For others, it's a way of life. For me, driving a stick creates a bond of being connected with the car and the road...being at one with the experience. Anyway, I'm thrilled with driving a 1989 944 n/a…and as Dan so kindly describes (see the Links page for a complete list I used for researching Porsches and 944s) there was something magical -- divine inspiration! -- about the process of finding and buying a Porsche. My journey to buying a Porsche 944 in April 2002 actually started with getting blue book prices on Saabs, particularly 1992-95 convertibles at NADA and Kelley Blue Book. The 944 is my first car-- I've always either borrowed the family car or friends' cars or hitched rides. Being a road bicyclist, I could get to anywhere I needed in Philadelphia by bike…or the surrounding areas by train…or girlfriend's car. Then there was the cost of maintenance, insurance (male, in the city, convertible, first-time policy? Yike$! Equally, no car meant not tapping the inner spirit that enjoys driving, the physical and psychological act of shifting gears, the spontaneity of driving off somewhere…anywhere, the midnight highway cruises. But with some money saved and from being a graduate student with a surplus for living expenses, I wondered what kind of Saab I could get for between $5k and $6k. There was a 1978 99 EMS in the family, and it was very well-made. Plus, I dig the quirkiness of Saabs, and you don't see them everywhere. For my price range, the 900 convertible with approx. 90k miles and up surfaced a lot. The 900 Turbo convertible with the same mileage range was usually $1k or $2k higher. (And I should say, my main Web site for finding automobiles was and is Autotrader. Others like Cars.com and Cars-on-line or Rennlist's classified ad had some useful moments, but Autotrader provided nice features, such as searching 25, 50, 100 or 200 miles from your zip code, and an option provided to sellers for including more than one image of the car for sale. Simply, it's a reliable site in which I've experienced very few technical difficulties ("busy server"). So…for whatever reason, while searching NADA and Kelly Blue Book for Saabs, I looked up a Porsche 944. Well, well, I thought…you can get a mid- to late '80s Porsche 944 for about $5k or $6k, too (other models were priced higher, and I wasn't interested in the 924)! Hmmm....! From then on, the search for a Saab dropped off and my focus on Porsche stregthened.
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