Dealers end up with old cars from time to time. In December 1999 I was at good old Fred Ricart's giant lot down southeast of Columbus, Ohio. I was sitting on the lot looking at some leftover 1998 Mustangs, V6/stick, thinking I might be able to get a deal. Then I saw a new 1997 Probe sitting at the end of the last row. Then I peeked around the corner of the building and saw about fifteen more, mostly blue and purple. $10999 was plastered on every windshield. Stickers were in the $15-16K range. The door jamb stickers were mostly 1/97 and that meant these new cars were a few days away from being THREE YEARS OLD on the lot. One was black, had a 5-speed, cassette player, manual windows and locks, cruise, tilt wheel, and alloy wheels, but no spoiler, pinstripes, or sunroof. It was what I wanted in a Mustang, but in a 4-cylinder Probe with flip up headlights and better gas mileage. For the $5K difference in price I thought, sure, why not?
I had a deal wrote up and until my upside down loan came into the conversation, things looked good. Then they asked for an extra $1000 down on top of the $1600 we had already agreed to and I simply didn't have it. I walked back to the tomato red 1995 Geo Metro LSi with $2800 owed on it and that's the rest of the story. I never did pay off the Metro, and it got repo'd in June 2000 a few months after I moved down here to Texas.