On a Whim

Now, with my wife's interest piqued and, more importantly, with her blessing, I set off to find every Series Land Rover for sale at that time in the United States. We had quickly realized that the olive drab 88 in Oregon would not work for us. With two kids, we needed rear seats and living in the rainy pacific northwest, we really needed a roof!

I searched Land Rover Exchange, Craigslist and Ebay and, within a couple of weeks, found a tan 109 for sale in New Mexico. My wife took one look at it and knew that the only Series Land Rover she wanted was a 5 door 109.

The starting bid was reasonable and I added it to my watch list. A couple of days later, I sent off a list of questions to the seller along with my phone number. He called soon afterward and for the next hour I learned that none of the questions I had asked were relevant to Series Land Rovers. He walked me through his ownership of the 109 and taught me about breakfasts, footwells, outriggers, crossmembers, frame horns, T posts, Fairey Overdrives, Lucas Wiring and Scotty's Adaptors. I finished that call with about three pages of notes and immediately jumped back on the internet to look up and learn more about all he had told me. Over the next few days, I told my wife what I had learned and called the seller a few more times to wring every little detail there was to know about his 109 out of him. All the while, the 109 sat on Ebay with no bidders.

On the last day of the auction, with only a few hours to go, I placed the first bid on the 109. Then I told my wife what I had done. Her eyes turned into saucers and, instead of the response one might expect (You did WHAT!?!), she ran to the computer to watch the auction tick down. For a while, we were the only bidder and, I'll be honest, my feelings ran from elation to trepidation and back. Then another bidder joined the action and we were out of the running. Just before that second bidder showed up, I was deep in the trepidation swing of my emotional cycle while my wife was riding high on her elation cycle. Those roles reversed the moment we were outbid. But there were still several minutes to go before the auction was over.

My wife said it was better that we would lose, but her eyes said the opposite. With twenty seconds to go before the auction ended, I raised our bid by $100 and the 109 was ours. My wife couldn't believe it! She was jumping up and down with excitement--she finally had her dream car.