I related this story the other day.

My 1995 Grand Prix was in its death throes after 185K miles and a trip to through TN/NC mountains that had trashed the transmission and brakes.

I was looking at a new 2005 Pontiac GTO as a replacement, I had test-driven both an automatic and 6-speed manual version and had settled on a metallic blue example with an automatic transmission (Don’t judge…)

I was at the point where I working with two different banks to finance the car when there was a shake-up in the management of my company. My boss got promoted and transferred to the corporate office 800 miles away, and his replacement was a woman moved-up from another station.

This woman and i had a long history of butting heads and after my initial meeting with her, it was obvious she was looking to replace me.

This put the GTO in limbo, because I wasn’t sure I was going to have a job by the time the first payment came due. But… I still needed to replace my GP.

After much soul searching, and talking to the dealer, I decided to pass on the GTO and instead bought a 2002 Olds Intrigue with 26K miles that had been sitting on the lot for nearly six months. This saved me about $3000 on my down payment, probably $250/month or more on the monthly payment and god only knows how much on insurance and gas.

I never regretted buying the Intrigue but really would have loved to see the GTO in my garage every morning.

Ironically, the woman who got promoted as my boss was kicked back down to her previous position on Day 29 of her 30-day trial and eventually left the company, and her replacement and I got along swimmingly for the 5-6 years we worked together.