So, I may have lied about the little part. This is actually a pretty damn long story. It starts one day way back in 2004 when I found my first Eclipse. Actually… no, it starts even before that… lets go even further back… to the real first eclipse. The one that got away…
It was 2002. I was working… where was I working? Oh yea, ACE Hardware. I worked at the west coast distribution warehouse in Rocklin. My job: Full Case Fill. I ran around the warehouse in a little electric tugger car with 3 trailers behind me, on the trailers were these plastic containers with corrugated walls and pallets for top and bottom lids, and I was filling them with stuff you would buy at ACE Hardware. I didn’t really like this job, but that’s another unrelated story. Right now we’re talking about the first eclipse.
I had a friend that needed a car, and so I took her to the Roseville Auto Mall to look at cars. While we were there, I saw a convertible eclipse, and I really wanted to take it for a drive. It was a maroon convertible with tan top and interior. Not the first choice in colors I would make, but nice enough. I took the car around the auto mall, and I fell in love. So I asked the dealer what he was selling that one for. He told me he would go check with the man in the back and let me know, then disappeared down a long hallway to the ‘offices’ in the ‘back.’ When this salesman returned, he told me that it was going for 23k. Let me recap. 1997 Eclipse Spyder GS-T (yea, it was a turbo… didn’t know that until I was driving it though) that sold new for 26k had apparently only depreciated 3k, despite the fact that it was 5 years old, and had 84k miles on it. I told the guy good luck with that and left, only to go home and blue book the car. You know what KBB.com said the car was worth in 2002? 8.5k private party, 11k dealer. So, I took my pretty little printouts and marched right on back to that dealership, slightly pissed, but ready to do some dealing.
When I got to the dealer, the first thing that happened was that I got a different salesman than before (which was a good start, I think) and then we went on another test drive (apparently that’s part of the sale). After that, we went inside to start negotiating. I had a strong hand in this negotiation because I wanted the car, but I had a well running vehicle, and no inherent need to replace it. I wasn’t even trading it in. I just wanted this car too. So we went back and forth, and they talked how much a month can you handle, and they were trying to leverage some way of keeping the price artificially high (in this case, 15k was their start). After enough back and forth, I got them out the door for 9.5k and took the car home, happy with what I paid and satisfied with the monthly payments.
I drove the car to work, and to my parents house, and to my friends houses, and anywhere else I could possibly drive it. I drove with the top down in february weather, and I put miles and miles on my new eclipse. 2000 of them to be precise. In 3 weeks. Then my phone rang. It was the dealership. The loan that they guaranteed me, well, yea, it fell through. The car has too many miles on it. We can get you into something newer if you want. Gee, thanks. So, I told them to just go ahead and take their car back. I didn’t need it. And I didn’t want some other car. They weren’t a mitsubishi dealer, they just happened to have that one used eclipse on the lot. So, I got a great test drive, and they got to sell their eclipse with 2k additional miles on it. Hope they learned a lesson, but I doubt they did.
And that is how my love affair for DSMs started.