For the three and a half years that I lived in New York, I went without a car. In Manhattan, a car doesn't make much sense. With the subway, buses and taxis, there's no need for one in the city. You can't exactly take it to work or to run errands around the city. And the few weekend trips out of town aren't worth the $300 per month rent on a parking spot in some garage near your home. Yes, that's what a parking spot goes for in Manhattan. And then when you want to use your car, it can take 10-15 minutes for the attendant to move all the cars to get to yours.
But when it was time to move back to Los Angeles I had to get a new car. For a while I was planning on buying a Toyota Prius or Honda Insight, hybrid cars which get 55+ miles to the gallon of gasoline. But then while sitting in a hotel room in Tokyo, I saw a show on BBC World about the Mini. I was hooked.
In September 2002, I flew back to Los Angeles to get my house ready for my return. It needed lots of repairs after I kicked out my tenants from hell. While there, I went to the Mini dealer in North Hollywood and found out they were selling Minis for $4000 over list, and there was a four month wait!
However, in New Jersey, I found a dealer much more interested in selling me a car at a reasonable price. The one I bought was a dealer's car, so technically its considered a used car. But also being a dealer's car, it was fully loaded, with the sports package, the premier package, and the cold weather package.
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Since I wasn't leaving for Los Angeles for a few more weeks, the dealer agreed to keep my Mini in his garage. I took delivery on October 19, (hence the date on the pic) and then kept it another week at my friend Jane's apartment in New Jersey. She lives a 5 minute walk from the Weehawken ferry terminal on the Hudson River, so I could easily take the ferry over to New Jersey and pick up the car when ever I needed it.
The Saturday before I left New York, I went over to Jersey and got the car, ran a few errands, drove back across the the bridge and parked it for the first time in Manhattan. I parked it in front of my apartment building, but down a bit, technically on the on-ramp to the Henry Hudson Parkway. Then Sunday morning when I went out to my car I found the passenger side headlight was shattered. Vandals tried to pop out the whole assembly, it seems scavaging it for parts.
As I was leaving in just a few days, and I couldn't drive across the country with a broken headlight, I called the dealer to have it repaired. Since they coudn't order a part in time, they agreed to take the headlamp assembly from another car and repair mine. Total cost, $800.
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One evening in early December, I was driving down Sunset Blvd, coming home from the gym. ...