What can I say...she (and I) prefer American cars. She wanted something sporty, but we wanted something that had decent gas mileage. We just didn't want to get her an Accord, Civic, Mazda3, Mini Cooper, or anything similar. The V6 Mustang fit the bill. It's less expensive than a V6 Camaro, and holds it's resale value better than most. This particular car is the Premium version of the model line-up, but I got it at a base model price. This particular car is still under a bunch of factory warranty - only 13,800 miles from new. The timing was right. The car just came in on a trade-in at Bommarito Audi the day before I saw it on-line. I've been looking for that exact car for a few months, and couldn't pass it up.
I had Omer put a tune in it for more HP (which we need to adjust with a second visit), but with the handheld tuner we can store his tune and the stock tune (305hp) which we are running now. That hand-held tuner is really neat. Lots of options for safety (speed limiters) and mileage adjustments, and with Omer's help - options for for various performance set-ups, and gasoline set-ups. Eventually, we'll have various tunes for AutoX and maybe some Road Course stuff.
Yea - I said it. She wants to do the track stuff. One little step at a time and she'll get there. I'm already planning on a handling package, and maybe some power adders down the road. I skipped the whole Karting thing with her. Maybe that was a mistake. But, maybe this makes up for that.
Another neat thing is that there are some many tested and available add-on options or the Mustang. That's neat.
She's a good kid, gets decent grades, and a real car nut. My hope is that this sparks something in her. Taking care of a car, making sure it doesn't get dinged in a parking lot, learning to wax, wash, detail, show some pride, and become a better driver - these are important starting points. So far she's off to a good start. She'll learn about plenty of technical stuff too. She's into that.
One of these days she'll probably be showing us the proper line around a track. Who knows.