The Dirt Field

Remember that time I talked about my crazy idea to get another M Coupe?

I spent all of December obsessing about the car. If you were around me for more than five minutes and seemed unlikely to openly laugh in my face, I almost certainly mentioned this car. How the M Coupes are rare (only 1800 in the US!) and beautiful and fast and superbly engineered and blah blah blah. How I regretted selling mine even if it was probably the wise choice. How I could rationalize buying another one.

Long story short (although probably still not short enough for the people around me), I spent the past six weeks working with the same dealership where I got my last one about buying the one they had in stock. They wanted more than I was willing to pay, their initial counteroffer was still way too high, but their second counteroffer was very reasonable. I still wanted to pay less, so the owner and I spent a good bit of time going back and forth by phone. It got to the point where he would start and end our conversations by saying, “Not a penny less.”

A week ago, we ended up back on the phone again. I called, said who it was when he got on the phone, and he responded immediately with, “Not a penny less.” He explained that the dealership had put a lot of money into the car, there was a lot of interest in it, another potential buyer had an appointment to look at the next day, and so on. I was unconvinced and kept pushing for the lower price.

He wasn’t budging. “What’s that saying…something about a bird in the bush….” He paused.

“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush?” I asked.

“Yes! Yes, that one. It’s like that.”

I couldn’t help it: “Actually, that expression works more in my favor here.”

He agreed but went back to repeating, “Not a penny less.”

So then I bought the car. It’s fantastic. I love it. I’ll sell my hair and a major organ or two before letting this one go. The whole thing is insane, I know this. But after I sold the last one, I didn’t just miss having a nice car. I missed the hell out of that car, missed the feel of the engine rumbling, missed the thrill of driving around just for the sake of driving. It took giving it up once to learn that I won’t make that mistake again.