Weekly Roundup: She's Always Buzzing Just Like... Edition

What a long, strange trip this has been... and it's not over. One of my readers put his one-owner '98 ACR Coupe on eBay back in, uh, February. I was pretty much the only bidder. Then we all had to sit around and flatten the curve a bit... which didn't help anyone but did keep me from going to Atlanta to pick up the car. Finally, another one of my readers offered to finish the transaction of my behalf. Which involved getting a tow truck. Well, it involved getting three tow trucks because the first two backed out with zero notice.

So the Neon now has a temporary Georgia home while I make plans to go get it. My hopes are that I will repaint the car --- it's a Belvidere Plymouth, the clearcoat was finished before the bumper-to-bumper warranty expired --- and get it fixed up to the point where it more or less feels like a new 1998 Neon ACR coupe. It would be a waste to turn it into a race car, of course, and I already have a SCCA/NASA-legal Neon to race.

Something tells me that it will be harder to find a survivor/restored first-gen Neon in ten years than it will be to find a Ferrari 250GTO. Sadly, that doesn't mean it will be worth anything to anyone.

This week, for Hagerty, I discussed vehicular envy and offered some suspicious advice. I also wrote another What If?, this one about a DMC with a French twist. For The Truth About Watches, I briefly related my experience using G-SHOCK SoHo for service. The title on that one isn't mine; I would never describe waiting for digital watch service as "a catastrophe".