The Hunt

For a good 5 years, I've been looking around cars.com, autotrader.com, the thrifty nickel, etc trying to find an old fiesta for sale with no luck. Then last year, I see a Fiesta S on Hemmings as the Find of the Day. 

"What!?, that can't be right"  $3,200 hmm...  no way.  But it got me thinking.  Surely there still have to be some decent examples left, but it was clear, you'd have to act fast if you found one.

I had never been a big fan of craigslist for unique cars since it was so locally focused.  To find a rare gem such as a low mileage, running Ford Fiesta, I was going to have to cast a bigger net.  So I did some research on wildcard searches in google and found the way to search all of craigslist. Typed in my query, and there they were. Fiestas for sale.  One would pop up every week or two, but there were still opportunities to get one.  For some reason 90% of remaining fiestas seem to be for sale in the Seattle area.

Here is the what you type into Google search to find all fiestas on craigslist: 

site:craigslist.org (1978|1979|1980) Ford Fiesta

My find happened to be in Minneapolis, which worked out great, since I have family that could check it out first.  It has minor rust, or at least repairable rust.  80,000 miles, and had been owned by a nice older couple, Vince and Betty, for the last 28 years.  The interior was pretty immaculate, however it needed some work.  So I bought it, flew to Minneapolis and picked it up and drove it 425 miles back home.  Now I had no doubt it would make it, but everyone else thought I was nuts.  Yeah, it made it.  It ran a little hot and the front end nearly shook my fillings out when I got over 45mph, but it did not let me down.

I am one of those people that think that cars, like kids, and pets [but not gentleman parts] should have a name.  If it were up to me I would have a ceremony, like in the Lion King, where Simba is held up overlooking the valley and introduced to the rest of the savanna food chain as king of Pride Rock.  I would try to arrange this, but I recently pulled a muscle in my back so I don't think I could lift the green Fiesta above my head and announce; "Behold, Betty the Fiesta".

There is a funny story about the car and it's previous owner, that I'll share in a later post, but it was clear that this little car held a special place in her heart, so as an homage to Betty, "Behold, Betty the Fiesta".