The Big Score #1

A new job opportunity came up later and I accepted the new job along with a little bump in pay. One day I was driving home from work and I passed a gas station near my house as usual. But something was different this time… I was forced to do a double take and what did I see? … a Beautiful black EXOTIC car! It was a Lamborghini Countach sitting on special edition “5 hole” gold wheels! This was it… I finally had the opportunity to be in the same presence of my dream car. Without hesitation, I executed a sudden lane change allowing me to pull a u-turn and accelerate back to the gas station! Behold… there it was, not 10 feet away from me. The car I spent many sleepless nights dreaming about as a kid. The car that drove me to cut articles and ads out of “Car & Driver” and “Road & Track” magazines. The car that was plastered all over my wall in posters and sat throughout my room in the form of toys, Hot Wheels and model cars. The Heavens parted and the Angels sang that day indeed…

After this life changing instance occurred, I couldn’t get the curves of the Countach out of my head. The exotic “look” that car had, sitting there was like no other and the attention it drew was like nothing I have ever seen in my life. I left the scene and headed back home and thoughts were flooding my head. I remembered seeing somewhere a few years back, something about “Lamborghini replicas” and kit cars, so I pondered the thought a bit. Immediately when I got home, I began researching and browsing the web, with “Lamborghini” and “kit car” type GOOGLE searches. After enough research and thinking, I started to go through my finances to see what I could do. Well, obviously I didn’t have any large amounts of raw cash on me, so I started poking around at banks and online banks filling out forms to see what kind of loans I could get. Well, it did look promising, so I decided to go ahead and look for a Lamborghini replica I could afford.

After seeing so many different types of Lamborghini Countach replicas on the web I was becoming a bit frustrated. The majority of the cars were crap! Most of them looked like a conglomeration of something that had accumulated on the side of the road for a long period of time and oddly enough, someone found a way to place Lamborghini badges on it. They had way too much wheel gap or the wrong wheels entirely. The lines didn’t match up and the rear wing was mounted in the wrong position. The side mirrors sagged too much and the rear end looked weird with the cheesy exhaust mounted in the wrong position. This was getting me no where and all the cars seemed to have something wrong with them. I tried using every key word combination on GOOGLE I could think of, like “Lamborghini Countach Replica”, “Lamborghini Countach Kit Car”, “Lamborghini Replica”, “Lamborghini Kit Car”, “Kit Car”, “Replica”, Lamborghini Replica for sale “Lamborghini Kit Car for sale”, “Used Lamborghini Replica for sale”, “Used Lamborghini Kit Car for sale”, Bah!!!! Etc… Of course there was nothing close to my area, so I had already come to the conclusion that I would be buying out of state. I also noticed that so many of the cars were 80% complete and the builder was trying to sell it. Typically they claimed “I have a baby on the way and must sell quick!” Well, I realized why I saw so many half built cars for sale. Usually the builder runs out of patience of money because it is a bigger project than they thought. All the results I came up on the web were bringing me down and I was ready to give up.

…Until I saw this.

This was the most beautiful car I have ever laid my eyes on and guess what… It was priced at only $29,000.00. I thought I was going to pass out after I saw the price and realized this may be something I could afford. This was the most perfect replica I have ever seen in my life! IMMEDIATELY I got on the phone and I contacted the gentleman that was selling the car. He fed me the typical line of… “Yea, I already have another guy looking at it, so whoever comes up with the money first will get it. AAAAAK!!!! I had competition! There was no time to ponder or debate. I had to execute on this immediately!

My strategy had to be quick and aggressive, so I contacted a few banks once more, now that I had an exact price I needed a loan for. But for the life of me… no bank would give me a $30,000 loan, so I had to think, think, think… How can I get the money for this beautiful car? I kept on with the banks and thinking about options… I got an idea to start looking for car loans on the internet. I didn’t find much, BUT I did stumble across a few options when I changed my GOOGLE search key words to “Exotic Car Loan”. Well what do ya know! I found a website that caters specifically to people, wanting loans for Exotic, Custom, Classic, Kit Cars and Replicas! J.J. Best Banc & co. www.jjbest.com IMMEDIATELY worked with me to get me a loan!!! Things were starting to look good. J.J. Best gladly approved me for a $20,000.00 loan with really low interest and their reps were very supportive and informative! What a great start!

So being approved for a $20,000.00 loan, was what I had going for me at that time. I HAD TO HAVE THIS CAR, so what were my options? Immediately I called the owner/seller back and explained to him, I was approved for a $20K loan and was still searching around for the rest of the money. I called around a few local banks and filled out a few loan applications. I was approved with my bank, I am a member of, for about $4,000.00 and I also got approved for about $3,000.00 from another local bank. I tell ya, when I saw how J.J. Best that gave me $20,000 with a low interest rate with such little trouble, I was a bit aggravated with my local banks. It sure made me want to place J.J. Best at the top of my list and not even bother with local banks for auto loans.

Well, after spending a few days working with banks and keeping good contact with the car owner on the phone, I could see that I was getting closer to the amount needed to buy the car. However, it seemed I was pushing my limits because I really didn’t have enough money in loans to match the car’s price. So I called the seller and asked him if he could come down some in price, as I was doing my best to get all the loans taken care of. He agreed to come down to $27,000.00 since he saw how serious I was with the purchase and he could see my honesty. He happened to find and send me a few more pictures to tease me even more!

Through all the research I was doing, I was also looking into a car Transporter to bring the car to Texas, because at that moment, the car was located in Atlanta. I located an automotive transporting company online and it was going to cost an extra $800.00 to get the car to me. Do some GOOGLE searches for “exotic car transport” and maybe a few other keywords for transporting. There are plenty of transporters out there. I didn’t dare want to chance driving a car I don’t really know, halfway across the United States… ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS, set some money aside for transporting! I have heard too many horror stories about people driving cars like this and getting caught in the rain or having something typical, like a “starter” going out 100 miles out in the middle of nowhere. What kind of shop would you trust out in “the boons” replacing a starter in a car like this??? I wouldn’t trust ol’ “Toothless Earl” at Bubba’s Shop to working on a car like this. Don’t drive the car home, GET IT TRANSPORTED!

I was also searching different Insurance Agencies to see what the rates were going for on a car like this. At 25 years old, it can be pretty challenging getting insurance on cars like this, but State Farm came through and they came through nicely! You have got to remember, this is not a typical car one would drive to work each day. This is a “Pleasure Car” and most insurance companies will insure cars like this as a Pleasure Car, as long as you have another vehicle to drive to work and what not. These cars are mostly “weekend toys” and the insurance companies give you a break since it’s not a daily driver. You must have a daily driver, in order to have a pleasure car though. Give your local State Farm agent a call!