A happy ending in the odyssey of trying to purchase a new car I’ve been talking about for the past three weeks. In brief, I replaced a Z with an A and a 3 with a 4.

I’d like to note a few things.

First off, for the life of me I couldn’t get anyone from the Milwaukee based Audi dealerships to work with me. I talked to three different sales guys over the course of a week here in town, and when they weren’t busy not returning my calls, they were busy trying to upsell me to an Audi A6 which I had expressed zero interest in. We knew what we wanted in terms of a product, had the means to purchase it, and for some reason couldn’t get a “sales” person in Milwaukee to “sell” it to us. There are only two Audi dealers in Milwaukee, both owned by the same group for anyone who’s curious and wants to know where not to buy a foreign car in Milwaukee.

So after talking to some dealers in Chicago and taking a good serious look at a Nissan Altima to complement the xTerra we’ve been very happy with, I was able to find a great deal on a new A4 at the Zimbrick Audi dealership in Madison.

You may be wondering why would someone with the will and the means to purchase an Audi in Milwaukee have to drive to Madison to do so. Exactly.

So far I’ve been very happy with the new car. It’s going to make a world of difference for us in the Cody household to have two cars in which we can move our children around town in, instead of just one. It’s a good balance between safety (crash tests, airbag, all wheel drive), performance (turbo) with a bit of fun and style still in the mix. I have a strong feeling we’re going to be very happy with the new car.

The other half of this little story is about what I left behind in Madison.

I had my Z3 for nearly 9 years. I bought it when I was 24 years old and it had 5 miles on the odometer. While I put 30,000 miles on it in the first year (Me and Jenny were courting between Oshkosh and Milwaukee at the time) alone, it settled into a more sedentary life as time wore on. There were some very memorable times and trips had in that car over the years, some of you are reading now were a part of them.

From outdoor music festivals in South Dakota to downtown Toronto and everything in between, it’s been a wonderful ride. While I was a little melancholy on the ride to Madison today knowing that I’d be leaving behind the car that so many memories had been made in, I also realized the time had come to turn the page and get something a little more practical for this chapter in my life.

I’ve always made the joke that you get a red two seater convertible sportscar either when you’re 24 or 54. I was happy to get that experience in on the former.

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