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Well, my Grandma has found a car! Despite looking at the Fit, Accent and other subcompacts, she’s decided to go with a 2014 Jaguar XK-RS convertible. Thanks for your help everyone! In unrelated news, I will no longer be getting my inheritance.
Just kidding. The winner has been selected, and will be revealed when she takes delivery at the end of the month*
*Unlike in America, ordering/waiting for your new car is common in Canada
Cool grandma!
Good for her!
You have no idea how desperately I was hoping that this wasn’t the troll-post I figured it was…
The thoughts of your g’ma rocking that car with the top down and the Stones blaring makes boring conference calls that much easier :)
Since my Grandma hails from Liverpool, her allegiance is to the Beatles. Nowadays, it’s mostly Classical music.
Liverpool or Everton?
It’s interesting that you should mention she’s from Liverpool.
My mom’s side of the family is, too. And my grandma drives a S65; my mom has a M5. I wonder if there’s some kind of cultural thing with women from Liverpool and powerful cars or if there’s just something in the water.
Substitute Beethoven’s Ninth for Gimme Shelter, then. Still a great image.
Both excellent pieces.
Your post of wanting an old grandma to buy a car like this reminds me of this lady I saw when I was in high school. I was working at a K-Mart at the time and spent some of my breaks sitting in my car listening to music. One time this old lady (I would guess in her 80s) pulled up in front of me. She was driving a new red Corvette convertible, had a black leather jacket on, and two cigarettes in her mouth. I sat there completely stunned. I have to assume her doctor told her she has a week left to live or something. This lady was living life to the fullest.
Two cigarettes? She was in flavor country… it’s a big country.
Me too. I’m hoping she went with the Jag.
I’ll put a nice bottle of Scotch on the Micra. And a fun ride in the Jag.
lmao.
You have one cool grandma, Derek.
Doh!
Got me, Derek. (I need pay better attention)
Me too, DW…. me too. :\'(
In our defense, it was masterful troll by Derek, even going so far as to mention his shrunken/vaporized inheritance before the jump.
What happen to my comment? Can’t even post it again, get the stupid ‘It looks like you already made that comment’ or some such site response
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Too Cool!
A youngish acquaintance of mine several years ago now,bought a new Zed-4 for her 80th B-day. She was beside herself with pure joy. Her first new car was 49′ Ford convertible.
In the 80’s, I designed and built a fabulous new cliff side home for an 85 year old woman, now that is optimism. She lived in that home for 14 years.
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There is a system wide problem with TTAC’s servers.
Half the comments are not posting at all.
I replied to Fordson in the Piston Slap thread and it appeared momentarily, then disappeared, and then wouldn’t let me repost the same comment (even though original was deleted).
Again, my apologies. We are working on it.
No need for any apology (maybe if TTAC was paywall).
“Little old lady from Liverpool” doesn’t flow quite as well but I am sure Jan and Dean could make it work. Very cool choice.
I’m sitting here waiting for my customer who ordered a new Explorer from me 10 weeks ago. Normally it’s less time, but I still don’t understand why everyone not in a hurry doesn’t order their perfect car. I’ll take orders and sell em like they are on my lot any day of the week. It just makes more sense.
Were I ever to buy a new car I’d build and price it off the website, then pick it up at the dealer, to get everything I want and nothing else.
I’ve don it both ways. If your car dies unexpedxtedly and you have work/school/etc, waiting 10 weeks is not practical.
Ordering a vehicle.
I haven’t bought a new car in a while, and things have changed. Most of the cars I want, can’t be ordered. Back in the day, I used too figure out what I wanted in a vehicle and send the info to three sales managers and get a quote. Now days you have the internet sales staff to deal with those kind of sales.
Ordering a car and getting just what you want is near impossible today with all the packaging. OEM’s need to bring back the line item ordering and the Asian OEM’s need to allow orders.
Even going to three dealerships is a waste of your time. You can find invoice pricing online. If you can’t negotiate a good deal on your own with one dealership from that, then you’re doing it wrong and wasting everyones time which then leads to not the best price. Asking for a best price is a sure way to pay more than you need to.
I do agree that it would be nice to split up packages. Of course, there aren’t many super cheap basic economy RWD manual cars for me to pick from anyhow so what’s it matter? Mustang is pretty close at $23k but it’s a bit too big for my taste.
Beautiful Jag btw…
Reg; “Even going to three dealerships is a waste of your time.”
Hi! Franz,
If you reread my comment, you will see that I sent the info(snail mail), I didn’t ‘go to the dealership’, this was in the days before the internet we have today and goes back to the mid sixties long before internet pricing and price info. Back then we had hard copy pricing guides. And believe me, getting competing quotes from sales managers paid off.
Eventually, I developed a rapport with different dealers sales managers and would just call directly with my needs. That rapport was only developed with Chevrolet, BMW, Ford, and a multiple make sports car sales manager(s), but they still exist today. Today, I use those connections to buy new and used cars for friends and family, and to flip.
Believe me, I know how it all works, I have been buying and selling cars to get what I want since I was sixteen, some fifty years now. It was never a business, just a way for me to keep upgrading without using monies from my regular work. Cars paid for cars, it was the only way I allowed myself to obtain a new or used personal vehicle.
When ever you post pictures I like to think I can tell where they were taken. For instance that looks like the Queensway and Royal York area to me.
Wrong end of the city. But now I want to go to San Remo for lunch.
Bathurst south of the 401?
Which would mean that you’re very close to Pancer’s, speaking of lunch. An establishment my waistline is more familiar with than is good for me…
Great car and color me jealous.
Rather lose it that way then watching it slip away one QVC box at a time like I do.
You too? Thought I was the only one.
Qvc?
This thread lit the afterburners of my imagination.
The QVC TV home shopping network – they’ve been wooing and cajoling lonely old ladies out of their dead husband’s pension money since their inception. They even take phone calls on-air and talk to the poor women like they’re “family” (as long as they’re spending money).
Some older ladies have passed on, and their homes have been found (to the horror of their “possible inheritors”) to have a room full of unopened merchandise with the big “QVC” labels on the boxes – with a mountain of debt in place of a savings account.
I’ve seen the gentlest people become obsessed with bloody murder when they discovered how QVC or its pre-digital predecessors had worked-over a parent or grandparent living alone and hundreds of miles away.
Major league scum.
Whenever I watch the show Shark Tank and that one woman mentions that she’s the biggest QVC seller of all time and will get a product for sale on that network all I imagine is shut-ins and lonely old folks buying it. Makes me sick.
This is a great way to find out who actually reads the articles vs. who just comments on the headline.
haha, I was thinking the same thing.
To try to give readers some credit… it really wasn’t obvious there was a spoiler after the jump, and the “article” after the jump was only a line and a half, so it wasn’t readily apparent there was more to the story.
Maybe that’s giving too much credit. ;-p
Yup! Caught me out.
I did a quick scan of the article, but the the spoiler didn’t register. Chasing electrical gremlins in a new Miata V8 conversion, and from time to time taking a quick look at TTAC and missing info, proves we really can’t multitask.
Buahahahaha!
So she bought a Lotus 7. I knew she would.
Great choice from you Grandma. I think that this new trend of the semi automatic sport cars are the ideal choice for Grandmas.
Did your Grandma’s ability to ‘Rock the World’ pass down?
Here’s hoping she doesn’t get to see her mechanic more often than her grandson.
This is great. Jack buys an Accord and your grandmother buys a Jag.
I was about to say we got trolled.
then I re-read the story. no one goes from a 20k budget to a 140k budget.
no one.
Derek will reveal his grandma ultimately went with an Ariel Atom with a Johnny Rotten bumper sticker.
The 4-cyl, though. Nothing too crazy for Grandma.
Only issue with the Jag is depreciation which is why it makes a great used car, but a terrible used car (at least in the USA). In the USA, it really hurts that your $100K+ car is worth less than $50,000 4-5 years down the road.
For a moment I thought it was a 1990’s Volvo C70 with a spoiler added.
I’ve driven the XKR-S (hyphen in fourth position, right?)
Are you sure she can handle that?
And judge the hood length for parking easily?
Just kidding. My comment will be revised once you stop pulling my leg. :)
Don’t take having to wait for your new car for granted.
I bet if Americans were forced to wait for their new cars, most would be happier with their purchases.
“Oh, you want it in the coolest color available, with turbo, and 5spd? Wellllll, I have this automatic slushbox base one in grey here on the lot, or I can do whatever I can to make sure you wait a long time and get 1 of the 3 things you want in the end.”
Oh, I see, it’s April 1st in October (I do read the articles before commenting)
At least they let her order.
My in-laws tried to order a Mazda 3 in red red and at least 3 dealerships wouldn’t take the order. They went with the ‘trendy’ grey instead.
She could wait 10 years instead. By then I suppose Jaguar will be making a subcompact… the XA… XB… XC… XD… damn, all taken…
That’s neat.
The Jag IS your inheritance. You might tell her that, if she wants a nice funeral, don’t wreck the car.
The level of comprehension (or rather, incomprehension) displayed in the comments to this post is troubling. Most of the commenters are shamelessly pronouncing their inability to make sense of one picture and 63 words.
*insert picture of attractive woman here*
*wait for compliments*
That’s terrifying. Her bank account must be as big as her ego.
I’d swear she’s saying:
“Hey! Get this piece of crap outta my space before I key it!”
I didn’t even know that you could build a car on a company’s website, they build it for you in a factory, and then they ship it to the dealer. Considering how long I’ve heard Nike iD takes, I can’t imagine the amount of time it would take for a car. We could’ve built a red FWD 1AR-FE Venza LE with the panoramic roof, but it probably wouldn’t have shown up until November 2013 lol.
However, I didn’t realize that used cars had warranties until this year, and that other services besides USAA offered vehicle discounts.
The Jag would be the way to go. You only live once. Enjoy.
“*Unlike in America, ordering/waiting for your new car is a common occurence”
I wouldn’t mind waiting if it only took 3 weeks, more like 8-12 weeks for a special order here. Oh, btw occurrence has 2 “R”s
I know, spelling police and all that, but he’s the editor, he should spell gooder then that ;-)
“gooder then that” Since when is ‘gooder’ a word? And when it is, it is used in the context of ‘do-gooder’, not better.
And we all make typos and I expect Derek is pretty damn busy putting out TTAC content and dealing with all the other managing editor work load..
Comment is proof that pedantic and annal go hand in hand.
You missed my ;-) winking smile and my joke completely
Hopefully, only once per annum… :-)
I’m sure along with my “gooder” The exception always draws more attention then the rule
@3deuce27
“Comment is proof that pedantic and annal go hand in hand.”
They should they’re synonyms
Grandma’s got a brand-new whip!
On a slightly more serious note, Derek, given the “forever-and-ever-ness” of the Interwebs, perhaps it would have been better to obscure Grandma’s license plate?
For me Beatles and Stones were kind of stuff of past, never liked them much and never had records. I grew up in the new exciting post-Hippie era of hard rock/heavy metal – think Grand Funk/Black Sabbath/Deep Purple at a volume turned up to the eardrum hurting max. Regarding Grandma – I assume that Jaguar is a hint. My guess – it is a Tata of some sort.
” The winner has been selected, and will be revealed when she takes delivery at the end of the month”
Hah, I’m really interested in what she actually decided to buy, as are several seniors at my church looking for a new ride.
I’m 68 and I have a great deal of difficulty getting in and out of a vehicle with the profile of the Jaguar XKR-S.
“Unlike in America, ordering/waiting for your new car is common in Canada.”
It seems like a lot of dealers around here straight out won’t order a car for a customer and two people I know of that did order a vehicle got the “Family Truckster” treatment when it was time to pick them up.
It’s considered very “weird” to custom order in America except if you are buying from a German luxury marque.
With some makes that focus heavily on reducing build configurations (Honda, Toyota) there’s little reason to order. If your dealer of choice doesn’t have the car you’re looking for there will be one somewhere not too far away. But with a product like full-size pickups where there are hundreds of thousands of build combinations it really sucks. You’ll never find exactly what you want on a dealer lot, and yet you’ll be looked at like a weirdo and overcharged if you order.
With a name like Derek, it had to be British.
The Jag is very nice.
How can there still be people who think this really happened?
Unintentional humor is always the funniest. Or saddest.
Maybe commenters are reading this at work, and missing the joke (while looking over their shoulders).
Betcha next time Derek uses size 64 font in flashing neon orange for the “just kidding” part.
Whatever she gets, make sure it has short overhangs so she can parallel park it in seconds rather than minutes. :-)
Derek…. Very nice car, and cool Grand Ma. I love convertibles {when it comes to drop tops, I take my GM fanbois hat off.}
The top goes down, and the price goes up. Me thinks the 20K budget,didn’t go far in the world of Jags eh?
Or.?…your scamming us?
As so often , the comments are even funnier than the original posting .
I knew a Grand Mother who was filthy rich and she bought a brand new Jaguar in the late 1970’s because : ” of all those luxury cars I test drove, the Jaguar’s power steering and air conditioning were the best ” .
Amazing but true .
-Nate
Didn’t your father work for Honda, Derek? I say the only mystery is what color her Fit is.