Jay, I was in a similar position i.e., the Dakota is my first ever truck! I
went with the Club Cab for the extra room and a friend says you won't hit your
elbow on the back glass when you turn around in the seat to back up! At 650
miles, I love it! It's a Sport 5.2 CC Auto that was ordered. The neatest
thing about ordering is you get precisely what you want and the window sticker
says,"This vehicle built especially for (your name)". A fair deal would be
appear to be invoice plus advertising and 3%. I paid a little less because I
went through my corporate fleet dept.
I am about twice your age and have always had some sort of sports car or
"sporty" car as transportation. I still own an Austin-Healey 3000 but
contemporary cars have been Mustang GT, Mustang 5.0 LX, Ford Probe and 2
Taurus SHO's. My wife drives the '96 SHO now that I have the Dak.
Obviously, getting the Dak was a big jump for me. The two things I really
notice so far are, comparatively speaking, poor gas mileage (about 14) which
is not a complete surprise and brakes that are worse than expected. I didn't
expect it to stop like the '96 SHO but I did expect it to be better than it
is. You might want to consider the 4 wheel anti-lock option. If you can
afford the fuel cost, the R/T might be an excellent choice. Word is the R/T
gets part of it's oomph from a different timing curve that requires premium
fuel. It's EPA rating is 12 in town as opposed to 14 or 15 for a 5.2 5spd
that runs fine on regular. I do believe that it could be a good long term
investment if it can be bought right. It might hold a little more of it's
value than say, my own truck but that remains to be seen. Good luck with it!
Tom Ware
Riverside, CA
PS. You want the tire and handling package!
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 20 2003 - 12:08:13 EDT