ahead of my time: tracking the birth of our PT Cruiser

Listening to a panel of marketing poo-bahs talking all about how great the "my Mini" campaign is (build a car online then track the progress online as the same car is built in the factory), I'm reminded back to 2000 when LeftCoastMom and I purchased a PT Cruiser, sight unseen, at the height of the frenzy.

I used an AOL Hometown home page to update the status (this was in the pre-blog days), and with a little detective work, I found our 2001 PT Cruiser tracking page again.

I regularly updated the status of our car over the five months between putting our $500 deposit down and taking the keys from the dealer's paw. To get the data I had to use several techniques:

• calling the dealer (many, many times)
  
• calling Chrysler proper at 800-Chrysler (remember, this is y2k)
  
• tracking the manufacturing plant status
  
• tracking the Union Pacific RR train from Mexico to the USA
• waiting three hours at the dealer to take delivery

Sure, through the process, I learned a lot about the car manufacturing process, the rail shipping process and how difficult it was to get info along the way. But was that a good use of my time? I'm smarter for it, I guess.

Glad to see that the folks at Mini have made it a very transparent process now, and are celebrating the birth of each Mini as it makes its way to its new owner.

(We sold the under-powered PT within two years of buying it... ah, for those option-rich DINC days again)