To sum up:

Last year I bought a 17-year-old used car in San Antonio, Texas. It’s a 2007 Nissan 350z, V-238, six-speed manual transmission, high performance sportscar.

The model was called the “Fairlady Z,” because the President of Nissan at the time of her creation, Katsuji Kajamata, admired the Broadway musical, “My Fair Lady,” which he had seen on a visit to New York in 1961.

I named mine Sylvie.

I bought Sylvie last March after months of searching for a suitable car. I used bots set to seek a car with: manual transmission, with fewer than 100,000 miles use, for less than 10,000 dollars. 

After eight months of garbage hits (a the Thing, a ’72 BMW, other nonsense), I got a hit in San Antonio about Sylvie. It was on February 29th, because last year was a Leap Year.

I flew down and bought Sylvie, then stored her under cover until July, when I drove her across the Southwest – TX, NM, AZ – to California.

She turned 100k miles on the odometer on the trip. Sylvie received her California plates and registration in Palm Springs where she was also treated to a refurbishment and repair of worn parts and given a full tune-up. I planned in advance to do this in Palm Springs, because So Cal is car country.

I figured in the Bay everything would have taken longer (DMV would’ve been days instead of hours; repairs weeks instead of days) and been of suspect quality. I love San Francisco, but if you need anything done you have to leave the City and then you are in the private club of Nor Cal where you have to know somebody to get the best work done. I hear Manhattan is like that now. Palm Springs did Sylvie and me right.

This is Sylvie in San Simeon day before yesterday:

We drove the last stretch home last year stopping only in Pismo for a night. I pulled into SF and parked Sylvie in her new garage, rented in my preferred neighborhood, in SF.

So since summer of 2024, my car has a home in SF.

And, for the last nine months, I’ve been taking Sylvie on long drives – most recently to Cactus League, as Spring training for major league baseball is known in Arizona. I saw the preseason Giants play in their stadium at Scottsdale and at Surprise, Arizona, where they took on the Royals.

Sylvie and I drove down to LA along the coast back in January to catch a Lakers game at Crypto dot com Center, staying in Santa Barbara and SLO. On our most recent trip we stayed in San Simeon and Los Alamos, a little exploration of Central Coast California.

“My Travels with Sylvie,” an homage to both Steinbeck and Thompson.