2004 Chrysler Crossfire

I had liked the Crossfires since the first time I laid eyes on them. I thought that they were very stylish. I'm not a huge Chrysler fan, but they'd been doing some interesting things stylistically. Their offerings were much more distinctive and artistic than pretty much all of their competitors, with an unmistakable Art Deco flavor. The Crossfire in particular was a model that appealed to me as a 2-seater sports coupe. The view from the rear, with the haunchy hind quarters and the boat-tail rear end, I thought was very appealing.

I actually looked at buying a Crossfire new when my Y2K Bug got squashed, but they were too pricey. From there the dream pretty much died. But years later I was in the market to add another car to the stable. I had expanded my storage capacity, and had room for one more. I had a number of eBay searches in play, but I eventually found a Crossfire for sale locally on craigslist. The price was well below fair market value, and I was able to chew them down even a little further. Within a week it was mine.

I had always known that they were basically a Mercedes SLK under the skin. It was the first experiment of the Daimler Chrysler marriage. And frankly I thought the Crossfire was the best of both worlds. Mercedes engineering is beyond reproach, but I hadn't been at all happy with their styling since they moved beyond the long loved 450SL. The Crossfire, by contrast, I thought hit all the marks inside and out.

Well I didn't really appreciate what the Mercedes engineering meant until I started driving the car. My goodness what performance! It's basically a modern hot rod. I really bought the car for its looks, but I quickly fell in love with it as a drivers' car. Frankly the only shortcoming is that I can't patch my iPod directly into the sound system. That functionality became common just after the car was produced. But it's too young to have a cassette drive, so my only option is one of those klugey radio transmitter gadgets.

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