Anyone ever *win* a white elephant?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So, the radio station that I listen to is running a promotion that they’re referring to as The Roar of the Roadster, wherein every time they play the sound of a roaring engine, you can call in to be entered into a drawing to win an Audi TT Roadster.

I thought that this would be an ubercool prize, so I’ve been listening and calling every time I heard the contest sound, and this morning I got through. So, I started thinking about what exactly I’d do with the car…if it would be better for me to keep it and have fun, or sell it and have about $35k. I knew I’d have to pay some sort of prize taxes on it, so I wandered over to the radio’s website to check out the contest rules to see if it said anything about how much this was all going to cost me.

I discovered that the prize is a free one year lease of the vehicle, not complete title to it. That sort of sucks. Now I’m trying to decide whether I should even show up for the drawing, because it seems like winning this thing would be more of a white elephant than anything else.

I can’t afford to pay insurance on two vehicles, so I’d have to sell my current car if I chose to accept the free 1-year lease on the Roadster. I’d also have to pay tax, title and tags to register the Roadster, and my insurance to cover that car vs. a 1998 Toyota Camry will probably be much more (although without a car payment for a year, I should be able to cover it). The other problem is that I live in northeast Pennsylvania…while the Roadster would be fun to drive around this summer, I don’t look forward to driving it over the winter.

So, if I accepted the car and then wanted to turn it in before the really bad weather started (can I even do that?), I’d have to buy another car, for which I’d have no downpayment.

By the way, my odds of winning are 1 in 120.

What do y’all think…is it worth it to go to the drawing and try to win, or will it create more hassles for me than it’s worth? What haven’t I thought of? What would y’all do if you were me??

2

Ahhhh, go. If you win the year’s lease you can cancel the tags on the Camry for a year and put it in a garage somewhere. For example, the bigass garage your friend in Harrisburg rents to keep his Cadillac in. . .hinthinthint.

Then when the lease is up you can get the Camry, reregister it, and pick up new insurance.

I wouldn’t worry about wintertime in the TT. It’s got a pretty decent top-you shouldn’t get leaked on too badly.

3

Well, the issue with keeping the Camry is that even if I dropped the insurance and the registration and stored it for a year, I’d still have to be paying on it to the tune of $330/month. I can’t continue to do that as long as I?m going to be paying at least double the insurance that I pay now for the Camry on the Roadster. My budget is tight as it is, I can’t afford to take that hit on the insurance just to tool around in a cool car for a year while I’m still paying for the sensible car that I don’t yet own.

::sigh::

4

Show up anyway. Most of those contests offer some kind of rough cash equivalent. And even if they don’t, you don’t necessarily have to accept the prize.