Every car enthusiast hopefully has at least one opportunity to buy the car they really want. This will be the car with the perfect combination of performance, options and colors. A car you stop to look at as you walk away after parking. As enthusiasts, the exact configuration of the vehicle, if not the vehicle type itself, will be very hard to find since performance focused configurations we seek clash with what is popular in the market today. Add to the fact we are often very picky in regard to maintenance history and condition the car we seek car is so rare it is the automotive equivalent of a unicorn.
I recently captured my unicorn by stumbling across it purely by accident. Here is how everything played out.
Picking out a breed
This phase is strictly a mental exercise. Unlike the unicorns in children’s fairy tales which are always creatures related to a horse, the automotive equivalent comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes. I lost count of how times I came back to this step during the hunt.
I started by looking for a small sports sedan, then changed to coupes, then the odd four door coupes offered by BMW and Audi, and was then followed by sports cars. Things were further complicated by an internal debate on whether I’d stick to only a manual transmission, or accept a car with a dual clutch or the latest breed of automatics which both deliver far better performance.
This phase of decision making was driven by what was going on in my life and how much I valued practicality and space. The most liberating moment came when my wife, the inspiration for this blog, told me to simply, “get what you really want”. While this didn’t eliminate all my self imposed restrictions, it did allow me to put aside some of the practicality concerns which drove me to compromise on hunting for what I really wanted.
Learning behaviors and characteristics
When hunting any creature, it helps to know its characteristics and behaviors. The same applies to hunting for the perfect car. I found this part of the hunt to be the most fun, despite it being the most time consuming.
I voraciously read car magazines and blogs on a near-daily basis, so I had a good idea about which vehicles on the market could meet my requirements. These two sources alone offer nearly endless reading material going back many, many years. New or used, there are enough English language automotive sources to find multiple reviews on just about any interesting car. Head-to-head comparisons, new model test drives, and multi-car competitions like Road and Track’s Performance Car of the Year or Motor Trend’s Best Driver’s Car offer plenty of good reading, great pictures, and contrasting opinions from multiple authors.
All the reading then lead to the configuration pages offered by auto manufactures where I spent countless hours wasting time…er…conducting research building hundreds of combinations of a car in order to get it exactly right. Even if you are looking for a used vehicle, these configurators can give you a good idea regarding possible combinations of options, color names, and the range of options available across the current model generation. These guides are very helpful, but I also found them really frustrating for two reasons.
- The configurations I wanted simply don’t exist. I was shocked by how many car companies only offer a manual transmission with the lowest horsepower engines and least expensive option trims. Want a high power fully optioned car? You’re out of luck in many cases.
- Options I really want are bundled with others I don’t driving the price of the car out of budget. I can’t count how many times I selected one option which then forced an additional option package be added filled with all sorts of things I didn’t like or want. Sadly, unless you’re buying a new Porsche, no one else really allows you to add options individually.
At this point the “short list” of candidates took form and I stepped into the dark, but very necessary, underbelly of the automotive enthusiast world: internet forums. Just like the auto maker configuration sites, I spent a huge amount of time lurking on forums reading current discussions and searching for answers to question I had about a particular car. Forums are fantastic for owners to get answers to just about any question regarding their vehicle or simply talk about the ownership experience. A problem with forums is they typically become echo chambers for mechanical problems which make minor issues seem far larger than they really are. Some are also populated with fanatical enthusiasts making any objective, meaningful discussion of the car or competing vehicles impossible.
The Test Drive
This was my favorite step in the hunt. After all the research and reading everything I could get my hands on, it was time to form my own opinion with some seat time. In the beginning, I figured living in a major city would provide plenty of opportunities to test out vehicles similar to what I wanted. This assumption was quickly proven false.
My first problem centered around finding manual transmissions. Despite some brands being known for offering performance cars in a manual transmission, they turned out to be very hard to locate. I spoke with some salespeople who had worked at a dealership for one of these brands for several years and they admitted to never seeing a single car on the lot with a manual transmission!
The second issue centered around the drive train I wanted not being sold in my area of the US. Several of the cars I looked at are offered in both rear wheel drive and all wheeled drive and I was only interested in the rear wheel drive version. The problem with living anywhere other than the west coast or southern states is the rear wheel drive versions are not sold and therefore finding one new or used to test drive became very challenging.
The lack of performance oriented versions of a car was also a problem. I might find the right model, but finding one with the bigger engine and performance-based options was very difficult. The normal configuration always seemed to be the smaller to medium level engine packaged with a few technical or luxury options which didn’t interest me at all. True performance based versions of cars are simply not stocked by dealers.
These issues led me to be opportunistic with the test drives. Even when I was not seriously in a position to make a purchase, if I found a listing for a car in my local area which came even close to being configured like I wanted, I’d try to get a test drive. Even if the vehicle only possessed a couple options, I’d get behind the wheel. I ended up with a large stack of business cards from car sales peopleat dealerships all over town, but at least I was able to form an opinion of the vehicle. Every time I walked onto a dealership lot I let the sales person know my intentions from the beginning. In each instance, they were always helpful and willing to let me spend some time on the road.
The Hunt
Every hunter I’ve talked to has a story about the one time an unexpected, unbelievably special example of the animal they are hunting appears out of nowhere and surprises them. Most of the time the animal is too close, too far, or the environment interferes with their success. I experienced the exact same situation landing my current car.
After all the time researching and deciding exactly what I wanted, it was time for the hunt to begin. In my case, nothing went as planned. I had narrowed my search down to two candidates and knew exactly what options I wanted. Both would be to be very hard to find optioned exactly as I wanted in my price range, but I knew they existed because I’d found a few listings as evidence.
Auto Trader, Cars.com, and Car Gurus are my unicorn hunting weapons of choice. Each provides the ability to search nation-wide along with the ability to get very specific with certain characteristics. There will be some overlap in the listings, but the results from each provides a really good overview of the market for just about any car. The problem with hunting unicorns is they are solitary creatures and sparsely distributed across the country. I was more than willing to travel just about anywhere to capture my rare beast and bring it home.
One evening while casually searching through listings for one of my two choices to see what prices and availability looked like this time of year. I was not looking to buy until 2020, but wanted to see if there were large changes in availability of good candidates and prices at certain times of the year. As I scanned over the listings in my query, I saw it…the one! It was in one of those paid dealership adds at the top of the Auto Trader page for a similar, but different car from the same manufacturer.
The picture revealed cosmetic clues indicating many of the options I wanted. After opening the listing, I realized I had found my unicorn! It was configured exactly as I would have built it when new. I have been looking for this car configured this way for several years and of the hundreds of listings I’ve looked at, there was never a single one with everything I wanted! The mileage was low and the maintenance records complete. To top it all off, this car was being offered at local dealership for a reasonable price.
There have been a couple times over the years when I let my automotive unicorns get away and I regret every one. This time I was determined not to let it happen again and quickly made plans to visit the dealership first thing the next morning after it opened. Two test drives confirmed this car was the one; It was a better fit for my needs than the car I was initially hunting, and all the conditions needed to make the purchase happen fell into place. I could not pass up this opportunity, so I handed over the keys to my faithful Mk6 GTI, and drove home in my unicorn. A beautiful 2016 BMW 435i M Sport with manual transmission, track handling package, M Performance Power Kit, cold weather package, and a few other tech goodies which really weren’t all that important. Here are couple post-hunt pictures of the car for everyone.
