Goodbye Oettinger GTI

The dot-com bubble was good to me, ain’t gonna lie. By the time I was 21 I was obsessed with this car and had enough cash to buy it with cash. Looking back, I put way too much money into it and thankfully sold it in ’04 to finance a trip back to school amongst other things. Since then, I’ve scaled back my transportation option and have driven a 2004 Corolla I still own today. Every once in a while though, I think back to those days and look at these pictures. I reminisce about the car much like I reminisce about smoking. It’s an expensive unpleasant habit that I truly enjoyed, it’s just not healthy for me long term.

They serve as a reminder for two things: 1. I’ve already had my mid life crisis car and 2. Owning it turned me into one of those douche-bags obsessed with trying keep it in mint condition. Yea…I was that guy trying to exit the parking lot at an angle so I wouldn’t scratch the bottom of my car…LAME! Maybe one-day I’ll have a nice car again, but based on the service record of my Corolla so far, that won’t be for a long time to come.