[Normy]

Well, two days ago I pulled the trigger on the Subaru. I'm now the owner of an '01 Outback "LL Bean" edition.

Two-tone leather seats, fancy floor mats, and a mahogany steering wheel? Yeah, whatever-

I spent a month working on the owner, and finally talked him into trading my old '97 Jetta and $3500 for the Subaru. I had to work on him a bit, and get this- he's a used car salesman.

He told me that he wanted to drive the Jetta before he would approve the deal; Listen- NOTHING worked on that car, save engine, transmission, and brakes! I'm serious- you couldn't even lock the doors any more, they had failed! No air conditioning in 100 degree F Memphis summers, only ONE power window that worked, and it even had a problem with the strut top bearings, where excessive play made the car pull strongly to one side under acceleration, and then strongly to the other power off. It was fun to drive, and still looked good...but it was borderline dangerous!

I noticed that the owner of the place that had the Subaru was a big-time NFL fan; so when I let him drive the Jetta, I kept talking to him about football, and the Super Bowl. You know...about how "The quarterback from the Packers REALLY deserved a Super Bowl victory after sitting second fiddle under Brett Favre for so long", etc. I totally distracted him on the 5 minute drive around the block, and he noticed NONE of these problems! I told him about the door lock and power window, but "conveniently omitted" the other problems, and he bit off on the whole thing!

-I'll bet you right now that I kicked his ass on this deal!

Well, today I woke in Memphis and the sky was gray. Did a run, and came inside and took a shower in the morning. About noon, the snow came, and it is probably a Michigan-grade snow, very thick and wet. Bored, I went to the gym and after the gym, I drove to the grocery store....at 20 mph! The Subaru has no problem accelerating on snow and ice, but stopping? Brakes are brakes. Fortunately I don't have to drive tonight, because the roads here right now are so bad that my roommate spent 3 hours driving the 25 miles from the airport!

This afternoon I drove it around the subdivision, there was about 4 inches of wet snow on the streets. It accelerated normally, with just a touch here and there of front-drive understeer, but you could feel it trying to find a wheel to put the torque towards, front to back, side to side. It felt like driving up a street with patches of snow, when in fact the street was 100% covered with it. Neat!

It will probably be two years before I ever actually need that AWD again....

N