Is this a stupid idea?

I vote fly and drive, it will be a bonding experience with your new car.

Drive it. If it can't make that trip, you seriously don't want it. Ask yourself...do you not expect it to make it to it's next oil change without catastrophic failure? If the answer is no, do you really want to buy this car?

I did a fly and drive from Atlanta back home to Alberta. It was a great experience. I'd love to do it again some day. You won't regret it.

^That. I did it with my old 318is. Granted the boys at GutenParts had done some work to it for me. But still drove it back from Newark to Tulsa without a hitch.

Have a back-up plan in place however. A friend flew from KY to FL this weekend to fly-drive a car he'd been searching for. Arrived to discover structural damage that had not been disclosed. He rented a car for the drive back.

I vote try harder to ship it. Not because I think the car will fail, but because I wouldn't want to spend 3-4 days of free time driving a car straight across the U.S. Surely your time has some value. Time + 3 nights in hotel + food + fuel + plane ticket = an expensive trip.

In reply to KyAllroad:

On the upside, rental cars do especially good burnouts in the dishonest would-be seller's driveway

Shipping it may be cheaper than buying the gasoline to drive cross country. You won't have to worry about it breaking down until it is home.

However, you'll miss out on one hell of an adventure. Make sure the seller notarizes the title, too, or you're in for a world of aggravation.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ wrote: In reply to KyAllroad: On the upside, rental cars do especially good burnouts in the dishonest would-be seller's driveway

No rental happening here, it's a 3000 mile journey so if I did it I'd be flying out, taking cab to seller's house, driving car home. Pretty sure cab drivers don't do burnouts. :) Also, I've already bought it, there's no backing out now. It was inspected at the local Mazda dealer, so I have reasonably high confidence it doesn't have major undisclosed structural damage (or, at least, not the kind I'd be able to spot with a 10 minute inspection in the driveway before driving off).

I ran the numbers on cost. $500 for one-way plane ticket, $600 for gas (figuring 20 mpg and $4/gallon), $80-100/night for hotels (I can't sleep in cars) for 4 nights (1 day to fly, 4 days at 750-800 miles each), throw in some food and we're at $1700 or so for the trip. That's cheaper than the enclosed transport but only by a few hundred bucks. I wouldn't be doing it for cost reasons, I'd be doing it for some combination of being frustrated with the transporters and the experience.

And yeah, I'm trying to decide if I really want to spend 4 days alone in a car on the freeway. Haven't found any local friends stupid enough to go with me. :) Also, finding a hole in my schedule big enough that I can take off for 5 days is tricky, it's not going to be in the next couple of weeks. The transporter companies may well come through before then -- we'll see what happens.

I have the title, the seller had it notarized, although I don't know if the California DMV would really care.

In reply to codrus:

Have you driven across the country before? If you haven't, you should give it a chance, you might like it. If you have and hated it, well, imagine your feeling of accomplishment when you arrive home with your new Japanese spaceship after such an ordeal

Can you stick a car in a POD moving unit? Would it be safe?

I'd drive it. I've seen some real sketchy cars seemingly navigating I-70 without problems. And it's liable to be snowing by the Eisenhower Tunnel.

Drive it. Sat phones are cheap (sorta ), and i think a cross country jaunt would be hella fun in my new-to-me black magic wizard car

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ wrote: In reply to codrus: Have you driven across the country before? If you haven't, you should give it a chance, you might like it. If you have and hated it, well, imagine your feeling of accomplishment when you arrive home with your new Japanese spaceship after such an ordeal

I haven't gone all the way, but I've done a 2000 mile drive alone (San Jose to Grand Junction and back last year, towing the Miata to the FM open house) and the hours of staring at a freeway through a windshield with no one to talk to do get old after a while.

In reply to codrus:

Ah, but that was a big boring tow rig and not a glorious 90s Gran Turismo wet dream powered by spinning triangles and angry snails.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ wrote: In reply to codrus: Ah, but that was a big boring tow rig and not a glorious 90s Gran Turismo wet dream powered by spinning triangles and angry snails.

When you've got 80 miles of arrow-straight interstate highway in front of you, it really doesn't make much difference. :)

Yes, the trip could be made more interesting by taking back roads, stopping to look at sights, etc. I don't have two weeks to do it, though. Finding room to take three days off (5 days total, but do it over a weekend so Fri/Mon/Tues) is hard enough.

In reply to codrus:

If nothing else, do it so that when you're 100 years old and watching one of these cross the Barrett-Jackson auction block on your living room hologram, you can say "see that car, kids? Grandpa codrus drove one of those across the country back in the day, a couple decades before roadside teleportation became available!"

I think you can skip one of those nights.. I did from Atlantic City to Ponca City OK.. which is just over 1400 miles in less than three days driving a 24 foot Ryder Box Truck towing a Uhaul Trailer.. and we got off to a late start the first day and had to deal with a blizzard in WV that slowed our progress to a crawl for about 6 hours.

Basically, jump in, drive and when it gets late and you start getting tired, find a hotel or motel, and call it a night.

mad_machine wrote: I think you can skip one of those nights.. I did from Atlantic City to Ponca City OK.. which is just over 1400 miles in less than three days driving a 24 foot Ryder Box Truck towing a Uhaul Trailer.. and we got off to a late start the first day and had to deal with a blizzard in WV that slowed our progress to a crawl for about 6 hours. Basically, jump in, drive and when it gets late and you start getting tired, find a hotel or motel, and call it a night.

Keep in mind that there's 10 hours of plane travel on the beginning of this trip and a 3-hour timezone shift. I penciled it out something like this:

Fri: fly SJC -> NC, depart ~10AM, arrive ~10PM, go to hotel. I contemplated a redeye flight, but I can't sleep on a plane, and starting a 3000 road trip after a night of no sleep sounds like a really really stupid idea. :)

Sat: get cab from hotel to seller's house as early in the morning as I can manage (not a morning person and that time zone shift works against me here). Pick up car, depart NC, aim for St Louis by way of Deals Gap (everyone says it's awesome, never been there, if I'm driving near it with an FD I might as well). That's 800 miles, which might be overly ambitious.

Sun: depart St Louis, aim for Denver, 850 miles.

Mon: Depart Denver, aim for Wendover UT. Wave to Keith on the way through Grand Junction, 650 miles. If that seems short, this is the leg with most of the really tall mountains in it and there's essentially nothing on I-80 between Wendover and Reno.

Tues: Wendover -> Santa Clara. 650 miles with 100 miles of lousy traffic at the end.

Vigo wrote: Im surprised noone has mentioned the wonderful power of the heater core. Id drive it. But i'd probably cover the whole front of it with some kind of protection before doing so. $30 of painters tape maybe.

Protect the front and drive it! The cooling system isn't that bad. Several years ago I had 3 friends with FDs. We cruised all over the place in the Chicago summers and took them to Gingerman raceway for a test and tune day. Never had any cooling issues. If for some reason you do begin having cooling problems I bet you could rig up a water sprayer system on the radiator.

I thought the FD's cooling was adequate for a stock car.. but once you turn the wick up you run into problems. I know Mazda designed these cars to be "just enough" in all aspects to make them as light as possible, so nothing has a lot of reserve built into it

FWIW, an NA miata fits in a 17 foot uhaul. I don't know how different the length and width dimensions are compared to an FD though. Could be an option, probably triple the gas cost though.

fwiw.. My sister's Ex and her moved to Chicago and they loaded his jeep into the back of a Uhaul with all their junk... I understand that unloading it was a lot of speed onto loose sand

mad_machine wrote: fwiw.. My sister's Ex and her moved to Chicago and they loaded his jeep into the back of a Uhaul with all their junk... I understand that unloading it was a lot of speed onto loose sand

That seems like it wouldn't work quite as well with an FD. :)

Doo eet! It's not a cheapo nightmare car. Bring a decent toolkit carryon for the flight and do the drive! We expect lots of enroute "ramptruck" updates.