Facebook 17 DEC 2022

Amazingly, cruiser #1 from the CyberWarfare fleet in Dallas in the early 2000s re-surfaced in Germany!

I had shipped it via RoRo ship across the Atlantic to drive it in Germany with the Texas plates for 6+ months (which I did, and it was legal, as I was a US resident – this was much cheaper and easier than a rental for that long, or buying and selling a car for the duration as a foreigner – “Ausländer” – in Germany). The plan was to ship it back via RoRo to the US again after I was done in Germany, but then a nice couple talked me into selling it to them (at double what it was worth in the US at the time, plus I saved the grand for the return shipment, too).

Since 2006, when they had it, they paid customs and import taxes, and made it street legal in Germany. It changed hands two more times and was driven another 70,000 miles on top of the 119,000 miles I sold it at (the company bought it in 2003 at 91,000 miles directly from the Euless Metroplex PD via auction & dealer — and I drove it multiple times from Dallas to the Maryland, Virginia, and D.C. areas (as I did not want to part with the prototypes on the airplane), and made long road trips to meet investors in Fort Lauderdale FL, to the state CIO of Georgia in Atlanta, and to the RSA Conference at Moscone in San Francisco with a trunk full of brochures for our booth .. putting 20,000 miles on it in 3 years.

Now it is coming home (to Berlin). The seller wanted 1/3rd more (!) than what I sold it for in 2006 – we found a solution :) sight unseen, just over the phone in a long convo … for its age and high mileage it looks pretty good, and has been well taken care of (this dude did a lot to it).

This is still the same $400 black paint job (FBI fleet discount) of June 2005. Antennae, dome light, flashers, and a couple other gimmicks the FBI shop added prior to driving out to Jacksonville FL to go on to the ship to Bremerhafen Germany are all still there. Even the Sirius satellite antenna for the radio is still on the roof, even though the matching radio is long gone (didn’t work in Germany). Due to the high cost of gasoline in Europe, someone put a LPG (not LNG) system on the car at some point.

Cocincidence: I bought it at 91,000 in 2003, and now again at 191,000 miles – exactly 100,000 miles apart :)