Month: July 2004

And it ain’t a front lip spoiler.It is a cockpit cover. I don’t have this particular one, but when I have to replace the current one, this will be it. This is a little fuller to cover cars with rollbars, but the added height will be better for getting over the new taller “surfboard” seats. The current one fits kind of tight and around the doors it doesn’t overlap too much. If there is a big crosswind some rain might get in there. We went out to eat at Chilis this afternoon and while there was a 30% chance of showers the skies didn’t look threatening. But it is summertime in the south and pop up thundershowers can happen at anytime, so the cockpit cover went on. Good thing too. About the time we were finishing up it started to rain. Once it starts you are better off waiting until it stops before trying to get the cover off and the roof up while the drops fall. We ducked under a shopping center overhang and decided to go shopping some in Target. While inside there, it really started to come down. It was really pouring because the sound was extremely loud. It stopped and started several times with the same intensity. Donna and I just looked at each other hoping that the cover would hold. When it finally stopped, we headed back out to the parking lot. Sure enough the inside of the car was dry. Only the tops of the seats were damp where they were in contact with the cover. This is at least the tenth time I’ve been saved from having to turn on the bilge pumps after a rainstorm by the cover. As a bonus it helps keep the interior from getting cooked in the hot afternoon sunshine.

Scotland chimed in with his pricing. About the same for the spoiler, but as expected shipping kicked him right out of the running. He wanted ?70 to ship, not the approximate $70 for our Canadian friend, with an exchange rate of 1.8$ to a ? that is a major bump. I had just one more question for Canada, how much was import duty going to be on this piece of plastic? Didn’t need a $100 surprise on top of what is already approaching a $400 spoiler. The answer is 2.5% or about $7.50. That is a figure I can live with. But can I live with that big a price? After painting we are sure to be close to $450. That is about what it would cost to get a nice set of lighter 15″ wheels.

I did a couple of quick photoshopping exercises on the images from the original Swiss website:

Doesn’t look too bad unpainted, but that is if you only look at it in this view. Taking in the whole car, that bit of black hanging off the front, I’m not to sure. On the first gen cars there was already a small section along the bottom middle of the car in black, so adding a black spoiler up front and back completed a line. No such black on the newer cars. An alternative, would be of course to get some side sills in black and to complete the look something in black on the back. Nobody makes a decent back ground-effect piece for the M2, except of course this same ATH. They make a killer back piece, unfortunately it has a couple of center cutouts that fits their dual exhaust muffler and no one else’s. By the time I’m done, I’ve have spent $2k (which is impossible unless I hit the lotto.)

To quote a friend, “I’m on the horns of the Dalai Lama.” Should I spend more than I think is same just to get the front to look like I like? Or should I go back to working on getting my wife to agree to some lowering springs?