In 5 weeks I will be moving from San Diego to the Daytona Beach area. My problem is getting my Miata back east. I could drive it in 4 - 12 hour days or pay Mayflower to haul it with my furniture. Nine years ago I was a zombie after driving a Ford Ranger from Tampa to San Diego in 4 days. Now, at age 60, I am really tempted to let the movers do it. Using Mayflower adds $600 to the cost but the thought of 45 hours in a car that I can't take a nap in seems daunting. I might even come to hate my dual exhaust by the time I got there!
My thinking seems stuck on weighing the cost against the discomfort. Perhaps, someone in the group can give me other factors to consider or things to look out for if I decide to ship the car. I could really use some group wisdom on this....
I love my Miata, but if there was ever a car that was NOT designed for
12 hour days of droning along a straight freeway, it's it.
Four days of your time should be worth something. If you're moving, there must be something more constructive you could do for four days than listen to your exhaust at 3500 RPM.
That comes to just $13.33/hour. If you include the non-driving time during the trip [toatal ~84 hours - morning of the first day through evening of the fourth] the cost drops to just over $7 an hour. Is your time more valuable than that? Not to mention the 'car lag' from long days driving.
PLUS the peace of mind. If you break down, get a flat, hit bad weather, or (god forbid) get in an accident, then the value of shipping it goes up exponentially!
Add to that, the extra miles you WON'T be putting on the car, and I think it's a bargain!.
Randy, I'm 20+ years younger than you, and there's no way in hell that I would want to drive my NB Miata for 45 hours. I once drove to my mom's house about 15 hours away in my NA, and I swore I would never do that again. I couldn't imagine doing a 45 hour drive.
Think of it this way...how much is your time worth? $600 / 45 hours $13.33 an hour. I would gladly pay someone $13 an hour to get 45 hours of my life back. Also, don't forget driving the old girl ain't free. I'd figure it'd cost you, what, $200-ish just in gas, plus motel(s) and food? So, by driving you're only really saving maybe 1/2 of that $600 or less, plus you're out 45 hours of your time, which you will never get back.
Now, if you had the extra time, and could take your sweet time doing it, driving coast-to-coast could be fun, if you had time to stop along the way, take interesting back roads, etc. But if you're just going to drone on down the big freeway at max speed just to get there, then I say ship the darn thing. $600 ain't a bad price to have your car shipped, either, so it's not like they're ripping you off on the price.
It sounds simple to me. Ship it, and enjoy the reunion when you get to sunny Florida.
I'm sorta in the other camp, I'd suggest leaving the car with a friend during your move, then go back and get it if you can make time for a road trip. I bought my Miata in socal and drove it home over three days (I'm North of the Border in the Great White North), not too bad, but if I had it to do over again I'd take 5-7 days and make a holiday of it. Don't know if the extended road trip can fit into your plans, but it can be a good way to see the countryside. If there are time constraints ... no contest, just ship it.
Its a long way sure but if you take your time, book some extra days and break the trip up, call it a holiday and drive it mate.
We have done, Uk to Greece, and back twice now, each time taking different routes through Europe, or the old Eastern block, every time has been fantastic. If you break down, you get it fixed, you take a can of Foam tyre repair in case you get a puncture.(we took out the spare to free up more room)
We took a tent and camped most nights to save money, but had to buy a boot rack for the extra kit that goes with camping. I'm sure if you look at the map you can find some nice twisty lines somewhere that break the freeway monotony. I've got a custom made system with just 1 silencer, and no Cat, we had the top down all the time except for one rainy day in France, (the shelf between the wind blocker and the boot was a fantastic extra storage spot) and we never noticed the exhaust noise in the slightest except through the Mont Blanc tunnel, and that was only because we turned down the stereo ;)
I bought a MX-5 so I could experience driving, rather than a tool that gets me from A to B, and to me this sounds like a experience and a half, I don't think it's fair to compare a trip like that in an open top sports car, to a SUV.
Go for it mate, even if you don't fancy it id be tempted to fly over and drive it for you
You do realize that here in the US, we only get between a third and a half the days off that you do?
Have you driven across the US? Driving through Europe and driving through the US are vastly different experiences. There are parts of the US that are awfully empty. You can drive for hours and hours and hours and find nothing. There are parts of the US where it may be 100km to the next exit off the freeway. And when you get there, there's nothing _there_ but a different road.
Sure, if you got two weeks (and a good chuck of money) to spend on the trip (and you pick a route that's fun and interesting to drive) then it's worth doing. If you actually need to get there in a reasonable, fixed amount of time, it's not as fun.
I bought a hammer so I could drive nails. That doesn't make every problem a nail. Sometimes you just need to get from A to B. When A and B are 5000 km apart with a lot of nothing between, and you've only two days to get there, driving probably isn't the right choice.
I'm going to guess that you have never driven across the US. It's quite different from driving from the UK to Greece! (Which is a trip I'd love to take in a Miata.)
San Diego to Florida is almost 3,000 miles (4,800 Km). There are LONG stretches where there isn't a windy road within a 100-mile radius.
There are certainly some points of interest along the way, such as the Grand Canyon and New Orleans, but if you start touristing, you'll turn a 3,000 mile 4 day trip into a 5,000 mile 2 week trip in short order.
"I bought a MX-5 so I could experience driving, rather than a tool that gets me from A to B"
Me too. Unfortunately, this is very much an A to B trip. It's about 48 hours of continuous driving, split into four 12 hour days. Or eight 6 hour days.
I'm close to your age and have taken extended trips in the Miata with my wife and all her "stuff" but always with the idea of not being in a hurry and avoiding the interstates as much as humanly possible. The drive down the east coast using coastal highways is a pure joy. Having said that, if I had to drive across country and was time limited, the Miata is not the car I would pick. $600.00 is dirt cheap for shipping. I looked into having a 92 Sunburst shipped from Arizona to Va. a year or so ago and the best price I found was about $1100.00 on a car carrier. Just make sure they are not going to hook it up behind the trailer and tow it - I've seen moving vans with cars in tow versus on a car carrier or trailer. If you do decide to do the drive, earplugs are a Miata owners best friend on extended drives. They will deaden the drone but not shut out other important information. Enjoy Florida when you get there but be careful about driving your Miata on the beaches - nothing like a little soft spot in the sand to strand a low slung car while the tide comes in.
Tom
92 Red (gone but not forgotten)
05 Vette (red, but of course)
Lest see: - The Movahe prety much sucks, Meander North to Vegas Take the Hoover Dam tour. Narly curvy roads round lake mead.
On to the Grand Canyon - a religious experience. Then pick amongst
Momunemt Valley, The Painted Desert, See the Pueblo/ Anastasy ruins.
Choose El Paso and a quick run to San Antone, stop at Tombstone, or Langry (pretty godforsaken) and Remember the Alamo in San Antone. (Ybut you will go through the Sonoran Desert and will hit West Texas when the spring flowers are out.)
Or stay on 1-20 and move to I-10 accross the Texas back state roads thought the panhandle onto the Texas Hill country. Time it to see the Blue Bonnets and truly gorgeous country. That gets you down to Housnton. Great Tex Mex - Papasitos, Great Stakes - A Taste of Texas off I-10.
In Houston,detour to San Jacinto, where Sam Houston routed the Mexican Army and created the Republic, and haul accross the Sabine. Lunch in Lafayette (some good Cajun Cuisine). Cross the Atchafalaya onto Baton Rouge, or go down I-90 to Morgan City past the sugar cane fields and enter New Orleans from the Houma side. A beautiful ride that takes you on the edge of the Delta - you must have some cajun music to play along the way, I guarantee!.
Hurricane at Pat O'Briens, dinner at Commander's Palace (reservations strongly recommended) Or Chez Paul, wander the quarter for the evening and cest le bons temps roulez.
On to Biloxi and Mobile cross the bay and you are in Florida. haul all the way to Jacksonville its a long binrg drive.
It's a beautiful contry and you only live once or put the car in the trailer and regret it.
Side note: Don't use Mayflower if you can avoid them. Recently had a bad experience--sloppy from start to finish, forgot to bring packing materials, didn't protect carpet, driver argued to death about a damaged item that was marked good at loading, plus their insurance sucks and they don't explain it before you pay for it. They are being sued on RICO grounds as well.
When I left school a group of us decided to ride from New York to San Francisco on push bikes, if memory serves it took us about 8 months off and on, as we had to stop occasionally to earn some money to complete the rest of the trip, we got into major problems with immigration and to be completely truthful we did not ride all the way, as we occasionally hitched or jumped on trains, but most of us managed to do around 80% of the riding. We camped probably 95% of the time, the only real problems that really come to mind was carrying all that bloody water around, and spending 10 days at San Francisco airport getting lectures from immigration.
I trust your judgement that the straight route from Athens to UK would be around half that from California to Florida, But firstly, we have never done the straight route, we have done the trip via Bucharest and Gdansk, another time we took the ferry from Plymouth to Bilbao and drove down to Madrid, took in the GP at Valencia and drove back via the coast. And secondly apart from the first trip which was from the UK where I bought my car to Greece where I now live, we have always had to go back to Greece again which doubles the distance.
Everyone has different circumstances, goals and opinions, and I can understand why someone would save their own time by shipping the car, but if it was me I would want to drive it. I think it would be an extremely memorable adventure, and what is life if its not an Adventure?
Thanks to your input, I am going to ship the car. I don't have the luxury of taking the scenic route and 4 - 12 hour days is just too much!
The $600 is the extra it will cost to ship vs. drive ($1200 total just to ship the car).
Does anyone know about insurance? What if the Moving van is wrecked or the car damaged in transit? Will I need special coverage? What are the pros and cons of using a auto transporter vs. the moving company?
Please don't misunderstand me. I'm not opposed to having a fun road trip or the spirit of adventure. It's just that California - Florida is a LONG trip, and if you throw in side trips and sightseeing it will take two or three weeks easily, which the original poster may not have, since he's moving, not planning a vacation. If he has the time and the money for weeks of hotels, great. Trust me, your perspective on camping out changes between ages 20 and 60.
That said, no matter how you slice it driving across the U.S.A. WILL involve long stretchs of driving on a road that goes straight ahead for as far as you can see, and goes straight behind for as far as your mirror can show. The Miata is highly specialized for good handling. The tight cockpit, firm ride, lack of luggage space and high RPM at 70 mph don't matter when you are tossing it around on a twisty road.
Challenge: Name a car produced since 1990, with comprable equipment, that would be LESS suitable for long distance freeway driving than the Miata.
I don't know mate I cannot ever imagine a circumstance that would make me ship are car as opposed to drive it, But like I said, we are all different, there is no wrong or right, only what suits us better.
To be honest I can't think of many cars that are AS suitable as the MX-5, economical, comfortable, top down arm out the window stereo pumping if its nice, AC on top up if its too hot, the same if it's raining and or cold.
We get very different cars over in Europe, the few American cars I have driven that spring to mind are the Impala, is it a Chevy? by far the worst car I have ever driven, driving from Newark ca to San Fran was too much. I think it was a Maverick, Ford pick up truck, a very close call to the Impala for worst car. A Mustang (I think it was a 2003 model), extremely bad car, the interior looked like an explosion in a plastic factory, Some Cadillac thing, it was huge sooooo slow, and handled like a Jumbo jet with Flat tyres on ice. There were a few others but they were the most memorable,
So my opinion of American Automotive engineering is pretty low, apart from the guys that developed the Miata of course, but even they copied, whoops sorry errr were inspired by a British car, and the GT40, err no sorry again British designed and engineered. I don't know how the American motor industry can make a 4.0L engine that feels sooo slow, dull, boring and sooo rough, it is such a feat of under engineering, In Europe most non sport model 2L cars will absolutely blitz most American V8's and the weird thing is they even sound better.
The funny thing is you guys had 1 of best engines ever produced (the Buick
215ci all Aluminium V8), and you gave up on it after only 3 years of production, and sold it to us Brits, the British's English engineers then took the motor and gradually improved the casting process and reliability, and gradually increased the standard 150bhp, to 400bhp+ that it can produce now (or should I say did produce as it is now out of production), and even today it is the lightest V8 you can get.
With what I have read about the new C6 it's getting better, but then the New Mustang GT comes out with a solid rear axle, come on Ford this is 2005 guys.
So the MX-5 for me would be very close to the top of the list to drive long distance, freeway or not, I would prefer to Drive a car than fall asleep behind the wheel of a couch with wheels.
I asked for cars less suited for the *specific* task of extended freeway cruising than the Miata, not worse cars in general (of which there are many).
IF the task at hand is four 12 hour days of straight freeway driving any of the cars mentioned, dogs that they are, would be far more comfortable than a Miata.
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