H.G.T.

I’m thinking about buying a new car. Well, a newer car.  It’s a black 2000 mercury cougar.  I picked it because out of all the sports cars I have found to be within my price range and proformance expectations, it has the largest interior. Plus, it’s really freaken’ black. Like “something Hotblack Desoto would fly into the sun” black.

A brief history of the cougar: for the better part of it’s production run, the cougar name was stamped onto muscle cars.  Then, in the late 80s and early 90s, they tried to make it into a sporty 4 door – basically, think of a cutlass Sierra with a really big engine. That really killed the numbers for the model line. Then in 1998-99, they introduced the current model, a six cylinder sports compact designed to compete with the likes of the accord, talon, and eclipse.

Despite being cheap, having few mechanical problems, having some of the best handling in the vehicle class, and probably the best handling under $20K, and looking like nothing else on the road, they didn’t sell well – mostly because the Fast and the Furious movie focused the sport compact market on Japanese import four bangers, providing one more reson to hate that effing movie, and the Cougar line is currently retired.

I drove it around town a little.  That was good.

I drove it around the loop road around our fair city. That was actually fun. 

Then, we took it out on a deserted, pitchblack, winding, deer-infested road and and ripped halfway to the end of the pavement at about 115 mph. (about 185 kph to our metric fans)  Now that – that was freaking dumb.

Now, I know, 115 mph is not *that* fast. There are motorcycles that, with a bit of tuning, can easily go twice that speed. THere are race cars that can approach three times that speed. But I haven’t driven a manual transmission in over a year. I have only driven a car this responsive a few times, and never at speed. Definitly not down a pitch black road infested with deer.  Lets just saw a few of those little brown bastards now know that the big black thing that lives on the long grassless place means them harm. 

Long story short, I found out what I wanted to know about the car. I scared myself rather badly, in fact.
I’m gonna have me one of them ‘sit-down talks’ with my banker tommorrow.

Did I mention it’s blacker then krootboy’s outlook?