Hey guys, thanks for being interested in my find. I have some quick photos I took of it on my phone from the outside, but not sure how to post them. Maybe better if I wash it and wax it and then take some good photos with a digital camera of the exterior and interior. I have a dinosaur Leica Digilux 1, from 2002, which I bought to take pictures on our honeymoon, and like our '98 subaru, just kept using it and never replaced, but it takes surprisingly good pictures. So I'll have a go at it when I go out to the car, it's at my mom's house in her condo complex parking area.

I live in the west 80's in manhattan so it's a decent neighborhood, been parking my subaru on the street the last few years as I'm a stay at home dad and therefore have the flexible schedule to do that. I was going to do the same with the x5, but maybe try to find a bumper protector. There are many pretty nice cars parked on the street, a lot of beaters too, but you see some newer german cars sprinkled in there worth maybe 30-40 thousand, so my car won't stand out as the nicest car parked on the block. Have to do it as the around here monthly parking rate is too much for me to pay.

Thank you riggodeux for mentioning the cargoliner dot com cargoliner, as I just went to look at it on their website and that might be a good solution for us. Our pugs are used to riding all curled up together on the front seat or back seat so might take a while for them to get used to being in the cargo area, but they like private cave like areas where they can hang out so they'll probably wind up liking it. They want $350 for it though which is pretty expensive. It does look really nice quality though.

I really like that the vehicle has non run flat tires so I won't scratch my rims on the curb (they have nice big sidewalls on the tires), plus won't bend the rim if I hit a pothole, plus it has a dipstick which is cool and also a full size spare. I like simple, and this car seems like it's simple in the right ways like those areas plus of course I had to have a manual transmission as every car I've ever driven had one and I like them.

Only thing I need to adjust is the emergency brake needs to be adjusted a bit as it doesn't hold the car well on an incline. I usually use my e-brake when starting off on a hill to hold the car while I ease off the clutch, then when the clutch starts to pull the car away I ease off the e brake and go. So do need to adjust the e-brake I think.