June 27, 2020
My “one day” has arrived!
Early June 2020, I am surfing the web and found several ads for C5 Z06 Corvettes. I focus on the 2003 and 2004 ones but one stands out a little more than the rest.
Long story short, I initiate contact to see if the car is still available… with only 5 people having seen the ad, I have a suspicion that it is. The owner confirms it still is. We exchange a few emails and during the conversations I find out a few things about the car. I’m kinda liking it… and ask for the vin so I can pull a CarFax on it. Ten minutes later, I have a shot of the VIN and off I go to CarFax. The report shows it was originally a California car and then legally brought in to Canada. It’s stunning.
OK, time to shit or get off the pot!
I decide to make an offer, he counters and we are really close… the final is that we agree to meet in the middle. I tell him alright and send off a $100 for him to hold it a few days as I make financial arrangements and to find a car carrier. Its both moving time and the covid pandemic is in full swing so they are hard to locate. My sister finds one.
Speaking of my sister, she was with me through the whole ordeal 100% and helped make a lot of the arrangements for me while I was working. She found the car carrier and even made arrangements to get a pickup truck from a friend of hers as her Jeep Cherokee is 500lbs short of having the appropriate towing capacity. I’m sure it would have been able to pull it no problem, but UHaul is adamant that we needed a hitch with a 5000lb towing capacity and hers was a mere 4500lbs. That’s when she gets the truck for us. Go sis!
With the truck in our possession, we set a time to get up the next day, pick up the car carrier and start off the adventure to pick up that ‘vette!
The trip was to a ways west of Hamilton Ontario, and I quickly got used to the pickup and trailer. The trip was pretty much completely uneventful, and we zipped around Toronto’s uber-busy traffic (the only real possible trouble spot), by using the 407 toll road, and it proved a good choice as the traffic was practically non-existent. On a related note, the price to use this toll road is ridiculously expensive, so if you ever go that route, be ready to offer an arm, leg or testicle as payment!
Arriving at the ‘Vette’s location, we parked in front of the private home and went in to speak to the owner. He was happy to show us the car and I inspected it from front to back and top to bottom. Then it was time for the test drive!
I drove the car maybe 10 minutes and I had already decided to take it… still, I went through the motions, looking for issues or errors but the car was flawless inside and out! After another 30 minutes or so, I just turned, looked at the guy and said “yeah… I’ll take her, let’s head back to finish off the paper work!”, and we zipped back. The smile that I had on my face was not my best poker face to date… lol
Arriving back, we quickly get the process completed, and I become the owner of a 2004 Z06 Corvette. The next big challenge is getting this “ground hugger” up on the car carrier, as we find out quickly that the car is too low to get on it without doing some serious damage to the bumper. The now ex-owner suggested that we move further down the street because there was a dead end and it may make the process easier.
While we were driving up to the end of the street, my sister instantly spotted one house with a high slopping driveway, and asked me if that would help… I said yes, so she jumped out and went to ask the owner if we could use their driveway.
It turned out that the owner was a car guy himself and not only did he help us get the car up there, in the process, he actually even cut down some 2X4 pieces of wood that raised the front of the ‘Vette up enough that the rubber air dam was untouched as I drove the car up on the carrier. Then the laughs started. Seems the door of the car was so low, I could not open it. Off came my shoes, out the window they went. Next comes me wriggling out on my back. As soon as I start, I am on my back and the words that came out of my mouth were “man, absolutely no room for having sex in this car” and the house owner’s response was instant… “not unless you are having sex alone!”… haha. OK I got out the window fairly easily and we tied down the car and off we went in the opposite direction that we came in.
Again, remember, this is June 2020, and we’re at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic and now, there were not only health safety issues, but my sister was a bit concerned about someone coming along and taking a key to the ‘Vette or worse… stealing the whole rig… so we went to the bathrooms in shifts, and the one time we stopped to get something to eat, she went in and I stayed with the truck. We finally made it back home around 2:00AM. In fact, the entire adventure started at 8:00am at the U-Haul rental company to pick up the car carrier and ended when we actually managed to get home at 1:00AM and the ‘Vette off the carrier and in the driveway by 2:00AM… an amazing 18 hours to travel over 1350 kilometers, test-drive a car, complete the formalities load it and drive all the way back home and unload it.
Yet, the adventure was still not over… the car was not yet ready to be driven on the road… but that’s a post for another time.