Brian Sees A Fiata1
It has been a few months since we’ve been to Brueggers Bagels for breakfast. The main reason for this is no matter what we tried, those bagels we brought home never tasted as good as they did on the day we bought them. We froze them, we froze them in the store’s special freezer bags, we kept them in plain paper bags (both in the fridge and on the counter) and by Friday they tasted just like the “bagel” we could get at Dunkin Donuts.
Ever since Donna had declared the new Miata ugly, I have been waiting for the new Fiat 124 to arrive because it is basically a Miata in an Italian designed body hoping that she just might find it handsome. Of the two, I prefer the Miata, but the Fiat was very nice looking in pictures, so I kind of wanted to see one up close for my self as well. The 124 Spiders just started arriving at dealers in early July. Right now they are all automatics for whatever reason, but that was OK, I just wanted to look.
A couple of weeks ago some of the Fiats began showing up “close” to us like Charlotte and Atlanta which were way too far away to just pop over and take a peek. JTs Fiat in Lexington is the closest one to us in Aiken at 40 miles and they received their first 124 Spider, in black, last weekend. JTs was literally right next to the Brueggers, so when Donna suggested that maybe we should get a bagel for breakfast on Saturday, I readily agreed.
When I pulled into the bagel place I noticed that the building was still there, but there were zero cars in the lot. They had pulled up stakes and moved somewhere else. It had to have been extremely recent though as the dealer’s website still has that next door address on it and the map still shows that spot as the destination on their contact page. Donna asked, “Do you want to try and find the new place?” “I have no idea where to start looking,” I replied, “but we could head a little further east to get on I-20 to go home and maybe we’d stumble on it.”
A mile and a half later we passed a brand new car dealership on the left that had popped up in the last 3 months. It was a Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram dealer and it said JTs on the building. Maybe I was imagining it, but I could have sworn I saw a Fiat 500 parked amongst the SUVs. Then the proverbial light bulb illuminated and I put Fiat owning Chrysler together and said, “I’m making a U-turn.” It was early enough still that the dealership was not open for business yet, but there were a few cars already lining up at the service department. I cruised past them and made my way over towards where I thought I saw the 500. They had some of the gates still closed, so we parked the Miata and started wandering through the huge side lot (I’m betting salesmen will have to drive you out to look at cars on golf carts.)
There, way in the back, were the Fiats, a few regular 500s, lots of insect looking 500x Trekkings and the lone black 124 Spider. It hadn’t been fully prepped yet, there was still plastic wrapping on the interior bits and it was dirty, but I liked the looks. It could definitely be my fall-back car. I asked Donna, what she thought, she said, “Not impressed.”
Thinking it had to do with that color and my plans for a black Miata, then spending more to wrap it a different color, I thought if I offered up a different color… “How about in red?” I asked. (Donna had once suggested the new Miata in red) There was just the one black Spider on the lot, so I pointed at a red 500 nearby, “Like that.” She glanced where I was pointing and said, “No way.” Feeling slightly frustrated by this whole process, I blurted out, “Now you are just making shit up to not let me buy a new car.” And maybe because I had a smile in my voice when I said it, it fortunately cracked her up with laughter.
When she stopped laughing, Donna asked me, “Well what do you want?” So I said, “A range from at the top of a black Miata wrapped in bright blue… she said, “No way.” before I could go any further… to a white Miata, to at the bottom, a Fiata in any color you’d find acceptable.” She laughed again and nothing further was discussed on the new car, the rest of the way home.
