Forget completion. Name the month you will drive the car. If you can't name one, you don't have a project. You have storage with an emotional attachment.

My oldest is in an apartment near campus. My youngest goes in two weeks. Everyone tells you this is when a car guy finally gets to buy the car, and everyone is wrong about which resource just freed up.

Every phone in the barn went off at once. Tornado warning. Someone laughed and said, welcome to the Midwest. A hundred of us went down into a stone cellar. Nobody talked about being safe. They talked about the cars.

The car has been in the garage seven weeks. You drove it hard the first two, then twice, then once. Nothing is wrong with it, and that's the part that bothers you. People spend a year planning the purchase. Almost nobody plans the Saturday after.

The car is in Ohio. You're in Colorado. Somebody else is asking about it, and every hour you spend deciding is an hour it might sell. That's the exact moment people skip the inspection.

Two numbers from this year don't agree with each other. The Ferrari Enzo gained 109 percent in a quarter. The index that tracks $40,000 classics moved zero.

"The kids fit" is not a fact. It's a date. Legroom you can negotiate. Headroom you can't, and the sitting-height growth spurt arrives late and fast, usually in the same year your money is deepest in the car. Here's how to turn inches of clearance into a number of birthdays, before you buy.

Cold doesn't turn your tire pressure light on. Five months of seepage does. The cold just takes the blame for the last five PSI.

The car you should buy is determined by six questions that have nothing to do with the car.