After many years of motorcycling, in the spring of 2008 we decided that it was time to buy a convertible or a sports car.  Actually, the decision was made the previous fall, but we didn't start selling the last three bikes until that spring.  Our children were grown up and with the purchase of the cottage and the work we were doing there, our life style was going through some changes.  We found that we weren't riding the bikes like we used to and reasoned  that a convertible would be more "practical".

I have always loved the Corvette and that was my first choice.  A lot of thought went into it and we decided that what we needed was a practical, impractical car.  We wanted something that we could drive to Myrtle Beach each spring or take for a week to Long Island or Cape Cod.

That meant something with a trunk so the Vette was out.  So were things like the Mazda Miata and Pontiac Solstice which were both test driven.  We looked at several other cars such as Saabs and Toyotas but knew that it had to be American.

The Pontiac G6 hardtop/convertible has no trunk when the top is down so that narrowed the search to the Chrysler Sebring and the Ford Mustang.  After comparing the two, it was no contest.  I grew up in the 60's muscle car era and spent a large portion of my time on a car lot.  Our best man's family ran a used car dealership in Watertown when I was a teen.  We were always doing something with or to cars or bikes.  I even worked for them one summer during college.  I was a Mopar guy in the early 70's and I'm pretty much all GM now.  In fact, I have only owned one other Ford in my life, but it was fairly obvious that the Mustang would be the choice.

After selling the last bike, we went looking seriously.  The first two cars we drove were 2007 V6 automatic models from two different dealers.  After driving the second one I told Marcia that it felt good and that we should get it.  She reminded me that I had wanted to do this since the prior October and what I had been saying that I wanted was a V8 with a 5 speed.  The car we were in was black with brown interior and top and had about 8000 miles on it but was a V6 automatic.  She suggested that I had to at least drive the GT that this dealer had on the lot.  I knew she wasn't crazy about the yellow but I also knew I was in trouble before hitting second gear.  She told me she would get used to the color.

The pictures in the upper slideshow is of the car now.  As part of the purchase agreement, we had the GT stripes put on.  This was done at the Caprara facility by a contractor from Central Square on July 18.  He was done in a little over an hour.  He was fast, good and I would highly recommend him.  Since then, I have added a trunk pod, chrome taillight bezels, sequential rear directional lights and headlight splitters.

Four shots were taken on July 8, the day we brought it home to the cottage.  They are in the slideshow at the right.