Get out your kites and tie down your lawn furniture because here comes some long winded rambling.
Well I finally got my GPW coupe on May 11. Drove home from Long Island on May 12. Couldn't have found a better one for me unless perhaps WhiteNSXs was selling his last month.
Like many of you I wanted an NSX since I was half as old as I am now. Upon first sight of each, I knew I'd one day own an NSX and 90's 300ZX. I "trained" for NSX ownership by stepping first into a black '93 Ford Probe GT straight out of college while working for Ford Motor Co and later into a black '91 300ZX around 2000. I realized even back then how close all 3 were in regards to cockpit feel.
While @Ford I had a short assignment on the '96 Cobra team. One of the test mules was white with with blue stripes but it was kept internal and low-key because the Ford/Shelby relationship wasn't too tight then. The '94+ Mustang looked reasonably interesting to me but it looked really sharp in white. That was the first time I realized how good white can make a car look.
After leaving Ford in 2000 and selling the 300ZX in 2002 after it left me stranded a third time, I felt I had to grow up a little and bought a rational, reliable, and reasonably good-looking CPO '02 Accord w/1,900 miles. Assumed I'd have it for just a few years. That was 205,000 miles ago. Ironically, what made me take notice of the Accord then was a co-worker's white Accord.
But I'd have an NSX someday. In 2006 during a work assignment in Phoenix I spent the weekends golfing & casually NSX hunting even though I knew I was 4+ years away from actually being in a position to buy one since I was going to be traveling too much for work for the next few years and didn't even own a house or garage at that point. Took my first ride & drive in a black '92 w/25k miles & maintained by Mark Basch. The seller was making room in his 4-car garage for his new Ford GT due back from service, and his wife was unwilling to move her red Boxster DD into the driveway. The GT somehow got totaled by the garage after service...so he held onto the NSX for a while longer. We still keep in touch which is very cool.
Skip past four or five misc NSX's in PHX that weren't as nice, and a '97 or '98 Kaiser silver in Columbus OH posted in an Autoweek ad. I still wasn't close to rationalizing buying one but I thought "why not keep window shopping and learning in case I stumble upon something too good to pass up." Awesome car and not crazily priced, I think ~$40k and less than 50k miles. It was the first and last Kaiser silver NSX I'd seen in person and I still remember thinking "wow" upon first sight. It had a dimple dent in the removable top and was in need of full servicing soon. But mostly it just wasn't the right time, so that was a pass.
Skip past a few more years of to 2009 when impatience to own a fun car again grew and I started looking at options, convincing myself I would sell the Accord and get a two-for-one practical & fun car that could also be a DD. First test drive was a Cayman S just traded in by the Pittsburgh Penguins goalie Marc Andre Fleury for a Lambo. This was at the dealership where tpolonyi bought his blue '05.
Super fun car but not nearly as practical as I had pretended. A month later I very impetuously bought a Monaco Blue CPO 2006 BMW 330i ZHP coupe from CA. Impatience had finally won and a 4-seater coupe was easier to rationalize. Along with white, I longed to own a dark blue and also wanted a pre-Bangle BMW as the writing was on the wall that BMW was going to follow the herd of gratuitous design cues and lose that special understated aura of BMW design. By the early/mid 00's I felt that few executed designs across their lines as well as BMW and Honda that were so timeless, clean, and simple yet curiously attractive. I bought the 330i ZHP coupe sight unseen and although it was super comfortable and fun to drive, it wasn't the powerhouse that its M-badges suggested... I'll never forget the first look back after bringing it home from the transporter. My immediate thought was that wow, that car would look really great in white... Perhaps the buyer's remorse could have been avoided if I had seen it in person and test driven it first... All could have been avoided if stayed focused on the NSX and hadn't settled. I owned that fun car just 9 months before I flipped it (and not anywhere near a gain...). Blue cars and BMW's were out of my system and I'd gotten the "first wife" out of the way.
Another big lesson learned was realizing what an anchor an integrated infotainment system could be. The 2002-era nav was slow and archaic in function and appearance. With NSX's "classic" and simple interior, I could always bring in my own GPS and iPod hook-up and never risk being stuck with something outdated in 5 years. Also finally owning a 330 let me vent some personal frustrations over the direction of auto design with a submission to that year's Car & Driver top 10 issue magazine cover parody contest. I think it was a bit too snarky (and honest) to get any consideration.
After a 12 month pause to recover from that expensive 9 month lease, I finally registered in NSXprime in Dec 2010 and became email buddies with thedon67 while trying to pay NSXCA dues so I could start receiving the intriguing-looking NSXCA magazines. Don played a very significant role in helping me lead myself towards my eventual purchase by being a great sounding board and by putting me in contact with key people and mentioning potential NSX's for sale now & then.
I posted an NSX wanted ad for a silver, black, or blue, followed by at least 2 dozen first dates with prospective NSX's over the next 18 months, most via email and 4-5 in person. I did a one day trip to & from Indianapolis for a silver '92 in March 2011. In person I realized I had owned a silver Accord for 9 years and internalized that it's really time for something different. Still, I later strongly considered tbromley's silver '91 given its condition but when I finally called to really discuss it, it had just sold.
Then there was an overnighter to CT via frequent flier miles in the fall of 2011 to check out an incredible red '92 with 15k miles and w/recent Larry B maintenance for only $32k (!). Don mentioned this one - it showed up at NSXPO 2011 having seen rain maybe twice in its life. Even though red wasn't a preference, I had to see it just to judge in person since the price & condition were too compelling.
As stunning a car as it was, it just wasn't the one. I did get a super fun weekend out of it though and I really enjoyed meeting the seller who retired in his 60's only to go back to school to get his architectural degree and then design his own awesome house on the shore. Being an architect wannabe myself, that was so cool to hear about.
Also I passed by Wayne Carrini's F40 Motorsports on the way to meeting the seller. I pulled over at the restaurant across from his shop to look something up and spotted Wayne walking from his showroom to the garage with likely some lucky clients and snapped some quick paparazzi photos. He still had the BMC party bus!
Until then my color choice really hadn't solidified. I favored black & silver even though I'd already owned 2 black cars and currently owned a silver, and blue was still a possibility, as this photo that I stumbled upon around 2005 was so captivating (and still is).
In the spring of 2012 suddenly the thought of a white NSX came back to mind. I had to see one in person to verify, and again Don set me up by putting me in touch with LarryG. I stopped by his place in mid-PA during a work trip to York PA and got to see his white '92 with NSX-R style hood. That's all it took and there were no other color options.
Here are some stellar photos of Larry and his white NSX.
Around April 2012 a white '92 w/50k miles came up FS and I drove 4 hours away to check it out. Ultimately it didn't work out when seller raised his price after I accepted his asking price (pending PPI). He claimed that recent maintenance had been done but he had no paperwork.
Also in April an interesting option appeared that involved a known NSX guru selling a thoroughly restored red '92 with a brand new crate 3.2L motor, all new brakes (02+ brakes I think), new Zanardi suspension, rebuilt 5-speed trans, and brand spanking new refreshed interior...but it was too late because GPW was the target.
Around July 2012 I had the idea to post a new NSX wanted ad to focus on white in a clowny way that I hoped would gather lots of eyes of sellers and helpers. I was contacted by 6-10 GPW sellers in the next few months because of that ad but none worked out: some had too many mods or needed more refreshening than I cared to pursue, some were being sold with unrealistically high asking prices, yet another seller raised his price after accepting my asking price offer (raising his price by 32%!!), and finally two sellers just changed their mind about selling them. Not a deal-breaker, but every one was a '92 in snap ring range.
Last August I stumbled upon Meeyatch1's "GPW Registry" thread and had the idea to email all the owners of low mileage unmodified pre-95's. Everyone responded and it was fun and frustrating to hear how much they all loved their GPW and had no intention to sell anytime soon, but they'd keep my info just in case. The best sounding one was a 1993 with less than 18k miles that was still with the original owner (champ19) who was originally from Sewickley PA near Pittsburgh. It recently had TB/WP/60k serviced by Larry B, was always stored in a climate-controlled garage, had all original paperwork, was never in rain/snow, and was 100.00% stock other than a bolt-on Comptech racing harness. Wow. Also it was the second to last '93 made. That was intriguing because from my experience at Ford I knew that often the end-of-model-year cars would receive various goodies and upgrades reserved for the following model year. We traded a few emails about Pittsburgh and NSX's and then I filed his last email away and moved on. Until reading about his in the GPW registry, the prom queens of recent for-sale GPW's in my opinion were Casper from 2009 and this one from SOS. But this '93 looked to be the prom queen of prom queens, being a one owner that was so well cared-for. I figured since I never dated the prom queen, I probably never would.
I'd occasionally think I probably could have made 1 or 2 of the recent options work and that time was just passing by...I kept thinking about a black '94 with 78k miles and all updated service for $30k in Seattle that Teej checked out for me during a work trip, amongst other ones...but then I'd realize I was not going to settle again and repeat the BMW experience.
Fast forward into autumn and past a nice sub-20k mile '92 GPW in CA (still for sale and he's a good guy - email me if you're looking for a GPW and I'll put you in touch!), a well cared-for ivory/silver '92 in NY (it had a very intriguing price but I ultimately passed on it in favor of finding that GPW), and another really nice local '92 GPW that was 35 minutes away from me! The seller eventually realized that he wasn't ready to part with it. Ironically, in Meeyatch1's GPW registry thread, there's yet another '92 GPW here in Pittsburgh that I never knew about and have never seen yet.
On Dec 28 I got a PM from Jan, the owner of the 18k mile all-OEM '93 from August saying that he was considering selling and would give me first crack. He emailed at 7:13pm and I replied a few minutes later, to which he responded "Wow, what took you so long?" We had some fun catch-up talk, got down to it, and I accepted his asking price which was on the high side of my acceptable range (but finally a realistic seller!!!).
As it turns out, my goofy NSX wanted ads were just the trick as it caught his attention and he kept an eye on them for the next few months after we spoke in August. :smile: He would only sell it to someone who would appreciate it for what it was and not modify it. Sign me up.
After two or three other GPW NSX sellers pulled the football from me, I almost didn't believe that maybe I had finally found it. Jan is a racing memorabilia collector and hobbyist racer, and he not only wanted to funnel some money into other things including his champ car, but he also realized he just wasn't driving the car enough to justify it anymore, so all in all it sounded like this one could stick.
He sent me a photo where the garage was as intriguing as the NSX itself:
It would come with all three body/electrical/service manuals, all dealer paraphernalia from the time, an unopened silver/black NSX owner's book, two models, a car cover, eight extra OEM wheels, a spare main relay, and spare muffler.
Fast forward four more months of melting snow and more emailed pics that whetted my appetite even more:
Jan sent me the owner's manual in to peruse prior to pickup, to familiarize myself with the car. It looked BRAND NEW and included the warranty papers, tire info, salesman's business card, and a polaroid of the car on the lot. Seeing the condition this was in, I knew this NSX was worth the wait. OK so maybe this was really going to happen.
In early April I flew out to take a look, as I swore I'd never buy another car sight unseen if I could help it. Jan picked me up in his beater Integra DD and headed straight to his Long Island house with a detached 2-car garage that's part museum, part collector warehouse, part work area, and part lodging with a loft above. That's where I first saw this in person:
It was all I expected it to be - it looked, felt, and smelled new.
17,821 miles - yow. It was no concours museum piece and had a few very minor things here & there, but that was perfect because I was not looking for a photography subject to be kept under glass. I've only seen one other NSX look and smell as new as this one (the one near me) so I was really excited. I'm not going to be bashful about putting on the miles in dry weather, but this car will never see food or coffee inside. Jan rarely if ever drove it w/o nomex gloves on so the steering wheel & shifter were dealership-new.
- - - Updated - - -
To be continued since Prime won't let me post more than 25 pictures at once and anything I post is automatically added to the above post...
Well I finally got my GPW coupe on May 11. Drove home from Long Island on May 12. Couldn't have found a better one for me unless perhaps WhiteNSXs was selling his last month.
Like many of you I wanted an NSX since I was half as old as I am now. Upon first sight of each, I knew I'd one day own an NSX and 90's 300ZX. I "trained" for NSX ownership by stepping first into a black '93 Ford Probe GT straight out of college while working for Ford Motor Co and later into a black '91 300ZX around 2000. I realized even back then how close all 3 were in regards to cockpit feel.
While @Ford I had a short assignment on the '96 Cobra team. One of the test mules was white with with blue stripes but it was kept internal and low-key because the Ford/Shelby relationship wasn't too tight then. The '94+ Mustang looked reasonably interesting to me but it looked really sharp in white. That was the first time I realized how good white can make a car look.
After leaving Ford in 2000 and selling the 300ZX in 2002 after it left me stranded a third time, I felt I had to grow up a little and bought a rational, reliable, and reasonably good-looking CPO '02 Accord w/1,900 miles. Assumed I'd have it for just a few years. That was 205,000 miles ago. Ironically, what made me take notice of the Accord then was a co-worker's white Accord.
But I'd have an NSX someday. In 2006 during a work assignment in Phoenix I spent the weekends golfing & casually NSX hunting even though I knew I was 4+ years away from actually being in a position to buy one since I was going to be traveling too much for work for the next few years and didn't even own a house or garage at that point. Took my first ride & drive in a black '92 w/25k miles & maintained by Mark Basch. The seller was making room in his 4-car garage for his new Ford GT due back from service, and his wife was unwilling to move her red Boxster DD into the driveway. The GT somehow got totaled by the garage after service...so he held onto the NSX for a while longer. We still keep in touch which is very cool.
Skip past four or five misc NSX's in PHX that weren't as nice, and a '97 or '98 Kaiser silver in Columbus OH posted in an Autoweek ad. I still wasn't close to rationalizing buying one but I thought "why not keep window shopping and learning in case I stumble upon something too good to pass up." Awesome car and not crazily priced, I think ~$40k and less than 50k miles. It was the first and last Kaiser silver NSX I'd seen in person and I still remember thinking "wow" upon first sight. It had a dimple dent in the removable top and was in need of full servicing soon. But mostly it just wasn't the right time, so that was a pass.
Skip past a few more years of to 2009 when impatience to own a fun car again grew and I started looking at options, convincing myself I would sell the Accord and get a two-for-one practical & fun car that could also be a DD. First test drive was a Cayman S just traded in by the Pittsburgh Penguins goalie Marc Andre Fleury for a Lambo. This was at the dealership where tpolonyi bought his blue '05.
Super fun car but not nearly as practical as I had pretended. A month later I very impetuously bought a Monaco Blue CPO 2006 BMW 330i ZHP coupe from CA. Impatience had finally won and a 4-seater coupe was easier to rationalize. Along with white, I longed to own a dark blue and also wanted a pre-Bangle BMW as the writing was on the wall that BMW was going to follow the herd of gratuitous design cues and lose that special understated aura of BMW design. By the early/mid 00's I felt that few executed designs across their lines as well as BMW and Honda that were so timeless, clean, and simple yet curiously attractive. I bought the 330i ZHP coupe sight unseen and although it was super comfortable and fun to drive, it wasn't the powerhouse that its M-badges suggested... I'll never forget the first look back after bringing it home from the transporter. My immediate thought was that wow, that car would look really great in white... Perhaps the buyer's remorse could have been avoided if I had seen it in person and test driven it first... All could have been avoided if stayed focused on the NSX and hadn't settled. I owned that fun car just 9 months before I flipped it (and not anywhere near a gain...). Blue cars and BMW's were out of my system and I'd gotten the "first wife" out of the way.
Another big lesson learned was realizing what an anchor an integrated infotainment system could be. The 2002-era nav was slow and archaic in function and appearance. With NSX's "classic" and simple interior, I could always bring in my own GPS and iPod hook-up and never risk being stuck with something outdated in 5 years. Also finally owning a 330 let me vent some personal frustrations over the direction of auto design with a submission to that year's Car & Driver top 10 issue magazine cover parody contest. I think it was a bit too snarky (and honest) to get any consideration.
After a 12 month pause to recover from that expensive 9 month lease, I finally registered in NSXprime in Dec 2010 and became email buddies with thedon67 while trying to pay NSXCA dues so I could start receiving the intriguing-looking NSXCA magazines. Don played a very significant role in helping me lead myself towards my eventual purchase by being a great sounding board and by putting me in contact with key people and mentioning potential NSX's for sale now & then.
I posted an NSX wanted ad for a silver, black, or blue, followed by at least 2 dozen first dates with prospective NSX's over the next 18 months, most via email and 4-5 in person. I did a one day trip to & from Indianapolis for a silver '92 in March 2011. In person I realized I had owned a silver Accord for 9 years and internalized that it's really time for something different. Still, I later strongly considered tbromley's silver '91 given its condition but when I finally called to really discuss it, it had just sold.
Then there was an overnighter to CT via frequent flier miles in the fall of 2011 to check out an incredible red '92 with 15k miles and w/recent Larry B maintenance for only $32k (!). Don mentioned this one - it showed up at NSXPO 2011 having seen rain maybe twice in its life. Even though red wasn't a preference, I had to see it just to judge in person since the price & condition were too compelling.
As stunning a car as it was, it just wasn't the one. I did get a super fun weekend out of it though and I really enjoyed meeting the seller who retired in his 60's only to go back to school to get his architectural degree and then design his own awesome house on the shore. Being an architect wannabe myself, that was so cool to hear about.
Also I passed by Wayne Carrini's F40 Motorsports on the way to meeting the seller. I pulled over at the restaurant across from his shop to look something up and spotted Wayne walking from his showroom to the garage with likely some lucky clients and snapped some quick paparazzi photos. He still had the BMC party bus!
Until then my color choice really hadn't solidified. I favored black & silver even though I'd already owned 2 black cars and currently owned a silver, and blue was still a possibility, as this photo that I stumbled upon around 2005 was so captivating (and still is).
In the spring of 2012 suddenly the thought of a white NSX came back to mind. I had to see one in person to verify, and again Don set me up by putting me in touch with LarryG. I stopped by his place in mid-PA during a work trip to York PA and got to see his white '92 with NSX-R style hood. That's all it took and there were no other color options.
Here are some stellar photos of Larry and his white NSX.
Around April 2012 a white '92 w/50k miles came up FS and I drove 4 hours away to check it out. Ultimately it didn't work out when seller raised his price after I accepted his asking price (pending PPI). He claimed that recent maintenance had been done but he had no paperwork.
Also in April an interesting option appeared that involved a known NSX guru selling a thoroughly restored red '92 with a brand new crate 3.2L motor, all new brakes (02+ brakes I think), new Zanardi suspension, rebuilt 5-speed trans, and brand spanking new refreshed interior...but it was too late because GPW was the target.
Around July 2012 I had the idea to post a new NSX wanted ad to focus on white in a clowny way that I hoped would gather lots of eyes of sellers and helpers. I was contacted by 6-10 GPW sellers in the next few months because of that ad but none worked out: some had too many mods or needed more refreshening than I cared to pursue, some were being sold with unrealistically high asking prices, yet another seller raised his price after accepting my asking price offer (raising his price by 32%!!), and finally two sellers just changed their mind about selling them. Not a deal-breaker, but every one was a '92 in snap ring range.
Last August I stumbled upon Meeyatch1's "GPW Registry" thread and had the idea to email all the owners of low mileage unmodified pre-95's. Everyone responded and it was fun and frustrating to hear how much they all loved their GPW and had no intention to sell anytime soon, but they'd keep my info just in case. The best sounding one was a 1993 with less than 18k miles that was still with the original owner (champ19) who was originally from Sewickley PA near Pittsburgh. It recently had TB/WP/60k serviced by Larry B, was always stored in a climate-controlled garage, had all original paperwork, was never in rain/snow, and was 100.00% stock other than a bolt-on Comptech racing harness. Wow. Also it was the second to last '93 made. That was intriguing because from my experience at Ford I knew that often the end-of-model-year cars would receive various goodies and upgrades reserved for the following model year. We traded a few emails about Pittsburgh and NSX's and then I filed his last email away and moved on. Until reading about his in the GPW registry, the prom queens of recent for-sale GPW's in my opinion were Casper from 2009 and this one from SOS. But this '93 looked to be the prom queen of prom queens, being a one owner that was so well cared-for. I figured since I never dated the prom queen, I probably never would.
I'd occasionally think I probably could have made 1 or 2 of the recent options work and that time was just passing by...I kept thinking about a black '94 with 78k miles and all updated service for $30k in Seattle that Teej checked out for me during a work trip, amongst other ones...but then I'd realize I was not going to settle again and repeat the BMW experience.
Fast forward into autumn and past a nice sub-20k mile '92 GPW in CA (still for sale and he's a good guy - email me if you're looking for a GPW and I'll put you in touch!), a well cared-for ivory/silver '92 in NY (it had a very intriguing price but I ultimately passed on it in favor of finding that GPW), and another really nice local '92 GPW that was 35 minutes away from me! The seller eventually realized that he wasn't ready to part with it. Ironically, in Meeyatch1's GPW registry thread, there's yet another '92 GPW here in Pittsburgh that I never knew about and have never seen yet.
On Dec 28 I got a PM from Jan, the owner of the 18k mile all-OEM '93 from August saying that he was considering selling and would give me first crack. He emailed at 7:13pm and I replied a few minutes later, to which he responded "Wow, what took you so long?" We had some fun catch-up talk, got down to it, and I accepted his asking price which was on the high side of my acceptable range (but finally a realistic seller!!!).
As it turns out, my goofy NSX wanted ads were just the trick as it caught his attention and he kept an eye on them for the next few months after we spoke in August. :smile: He would only sell it to someone who would appreciate it for what it was and not modify it. Sign me up.
After two or three other GPW NSX sellers pulled the football from me, I almost didn't believe that maybe I had finally found it. Jan is a racing memorabilia collector and hobbyist racer, and he not only wanted to funnel some money into other things including his champ car, but he also realized he just wasn't driving the car enough to justify it anymore, so all in all it sounded like this one could stick.
He sent me a photo where the garage was as intriguing as the NSX itself:
It would come with all three body/electrical/service manuals, all dealer paraphernalia from the time, an unopened silver/black NSX owner's book, two models, a car cover, eight extra OEM wheels, a spare main relay, and spare muffler.
Fast forward four more months of melting snow and more emailed pics that whetted my appetite even more:
Jan sent me the owner's manual in to peruse prior to pickup, to familiarize myself with the car. It looked BRAND NEW and included the warranty papers, tire info, salesman's business card, and a polaroid of the car on the lot. Seeing the condition this was in, I knew this NSX was worth the wait. OK so maybe this was really going to happen.
In early April I flew out to take a look, as I swore I'd never buy another car sight unseen if I could help it. Jan picked me up in his beater Integra DD and headed straight to his Long Island house with a detached 2-car garage that's part museum, part collector warehouse, part work area, and part lodging with a loft above. That's where I first saw this in person:
It was all I expected it to be - it looked, felt, and smelled new.
17,821 miles - yow. It was no concours museum piece and had a few very minor things here & there, but that was perfect because I was not looking for a photography subject to be kept under glass. I've only seen one other NSX look and smell as new as this one (the one near me) so I was really excited. I'm not going to be bashful about putting on the miles in dry weather, but this car will never see food or coffee inside. Jan rarely if ever drove it w/o nomex gloves on so the steering wheel & shifter were dealership-new.
- - - Updated - - -
To be continued since Prime won't let me post more than 25 pictures at once and anything I post is automatically added to the above post...
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