My Wife Sold My First Sports Car

And it proved how much she loves me

I’m dubbing this my “anniversary” post, because it lands very close to the 32nd anniversary of my marriage and hey, look at that, it’s about love and, of course, cars. I also decided it would be fun to try an audio version of this one (with thanks to Brian Reindel for the inspiration; check out his Substack here). If you decide to listen to the audio version, I’d love to know what you think.

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What would you think if I told you that my wife sold my first sports car when I was out of town on a business trip?

What if I added that it was my very first performance car, the kind of car I had longed for all my life?

What if I told you that she traded it in for a freaking Hyundai Elantra, the most basic model from the most basic car maker?

If you conjured up visions of a bitter, vindictive relationship, of a woman mad at her husband for buying a car and eager to exact revenge, well, you couldn’t be more wrong. Because the day my wife sold my first sports car was the day I realized just how much she loved me. Let me explain.

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I’ve been a car nut ever since I was a kid, watching my dad work on his old Austin Healy 3000. I read the Car & Driver magazines that my dad subscribed to and I had car posters up on my bedroom walls—Lamborghini Countach, Porsche 911—when most of my buddies were ogling Farrah Fawcett posters.

My buddies were into this famous poster …

… but I was more into the cars.

But from the time I got my first driver's license in 1980 until 2003, I never owned anything remotely cool. The closest I came was a baby blue 1977 VW Rabbit (which I drove like it was a GTI) and a 1987 Saab 900S, which I would have driven harder if it hadn’t been in a state of permanent breakdown. That was it. The rest of my cars were boring: a 1974 Ford LTD, a 1981 Chevy Malibu, a 1991 Saturn SL2, and others I can’t quite remember. My choice in life was to pursue my education, which meant forgoing cool-car money. Through all those years, though, I kept a continuous Car & Driver subscription and occasionally added Road and Track and Automobile (Motor Trend and the other magazines never did it for me). These magazines kept me dreaming.

Man, I loved this car!

I didn’t worry too much about keeping this one clean

And then one day in 2003, my wife and I looked at our situation—at the stability of the business we had founded, at our reasonable mortgage payment, and our limited other expenses—and decided we could take on a new car payment. But what car would I choose? I don’t recall the exact shopping list honestly, other than I’m sure it included a GTI, and it sure didn’t reach up into Porsche/BMW/Audi territory. I imagine Acura and Honda and Toyota were in the running.

My mind was made up though the day I came around a corner in Mukilteo and saw a brand new Nissan 350Z. With two doors, rear-wheel drive, that sexy shape, and a six-cylinder engine, it checked all my boxes. But these cars were scarce, and I soon discovered its sister car, the Infiniti G35, available in the coupe format, which scratched exactly the same itch. Before long, I was driving off the lot in my brand new G35 Coupe in Caribbean Blue metallic. I was in heaven!

This was my first cool car (not this one, but this model)

I drove like I was in heaven too, because in car-guy heaven you get to do whatever you want and there are no costs. I put my kids in the car with me and drove 100 miles per hour. I turned off the traction control and did smokey burnouts out on Machias Road. I searched out and drove on the curviest roads I could find (this is when I first discovered the local Mecca called High Bridge Road.) 

But I wasn’t in heaven, I was in reality, where cops give you speeding tickets for doing 40 over, where tires wear out very quickly when you drive like a bat out of hell, and where gas gets really expensive when you’re only getting 16 miles per gallon. Then some asshole backed into me while I was in a parking lot down near Key Arena and I quickly paid out my $1000 insurance deductible for the repair.

This wasn’t what I bargained for. It wasn’t what WE bargained for and in my marriage, finances were a WE thing. We knew we could afford a car payment—but we had no idea about the true cost of ownership of a high-powered car being driven by a guy with 25 years of pent-up hooning in his heart. And we suddenly realized that we simply couldn’t afford to own a sporty car.

This story could easily have taken a different turn at this point. I could’ve clung to the car, promised to drive more reasonably, pledged to find some extra income source. But I didn’t want to drive slowly and carefully, and I sure didn’t have money to go to the track.

Sara could have ranted and raved about my irresponsibility, guilt-tripping me into selling the car. But this wasn’t the way we were with each other, especially about our shared money. Years of living on very little had taught us that we functioned best when we shared a vision of where we wanted to spend our money and then acted in accordance with that vision. So, we shared the vision that the car had to go, and that what we needed in its place was something really practical, with four doors and an extended warranty.

That’s where the love comes in. It killed me to have to sell this car. Several times, we agreed that I’d put it on the market or take it somewhere to trade it in. But I couldn’t do it. It just made me too sad. It felt like I was trading in my dream. Hell, it felt like I was trading a lifetime of dreams! So we agreed that Sara would do it. Together, we chose a really practical car—a brand new Hyundai Elantra, with a 10-year, 100,000-mile warranty. Now the only question was how to manage the transaction.

Soon enough I went off on a business trip for a couple days, and Sara decided that the most loving thing she could do was dispose of the car while I was gone, so I wouldn’t have to see it drive away. So she packed up our daughter Louisa—who would have been 9 years old—and headed off to the Hyundai dealership. Sara marched into the dealership, daughter in tow, and asked to buy the base model Elantra. Sure, black was fine—and she had a very good idea of what our car was worth in trade-in and what she was willing to pay.

And then she played the waiting game. She knew what she was after, and was willing to stick it out until she got just the deal she wanted—not a dollar less, not a dollar more. She talked to the salesman, she talked to the manager, she talked to the general manager. It took hours, and all the while she had to contend with an increasingly bored and hungry young daughter. But in the end, she drove off the lot in a new car and with a nice check in her back pocket. (If you ever run into Sara, by the way, ask her for her version of this story—she’ll tell it much better than me.)

The practical alternative to a cool car

That evening, my colleague pulled into my house to drop me off and said, “Where’s your car?” I told him my wife had sold it and bought the hideous black Elantra that sat in our carport.  He was horrified. But I hugged my wife and told her how much I loved her and believe you, I knew how much she loved me. There would come a time for another fun car.

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Do you have a car from your past that you loved, or hated, or just have a good story about? Don’t hesitate to share in the comments, or share this story with someone who might like it.

Here’s the car I’m driving now … on the race track! See, dreams come true if you wait for the right time.