Arriving at the trucking company, the seals on the doors are broken, and the doors swung back to reveal the hulking (sulking?) car. The Cerbie gets its first look at the New World, and America gets its first look at the awesome TVR Cerbera. This was the moment I had been waiting for!

Ulp…there’s a two foot height difference here!! Now what? It took another four hours to procure a forklift and a heavy steel plate, move the very heavy steel plate to the edge and create a ramp, untie the Cerbie from its moorings, find a hammer and crowbar and remove the wooden chocks nailed around its wheels, inflate the flat tyres, find the keys, and figure out how to disable the immobilizer. I set off the car alarm numerous times--everyone got a headache from the piercing shrill in the confines of the container. But nothing was going to stop me by now so help me God! Eventually, I backed down to the loading dock, to be faced with problem number two.

Now it was a simple matter of unloading the car onto the loading dock and driving down the ramp, or so I thought.

The angle of the ramp from the loading dock to ground level was such that the Cerbera kept grounding out in the middle, no matter how much I inflated the tyres. Eventually I solved this by putting some planks halfway down the ramp, so that the rear of the Cerbie was forced up as it came down the ramp, allowing enough clearance for the undercarriage to roll back without grounding out.

FREE AT LAST!!!! Now it was a simple matter of leaving my other car behind for pickup later, transferring the radar detector, garage door opener, jumper cables, paperwork, etc., filling up with petrol, and checking the tyre pressures before I could finally drive it home. One good thing to come out of all the delay was that the weather had cleared and the sun was shining by the time I was done. It was turning out to be a great day!!!!

I could hardly contain my excitement enough to drive the short distance on the highway and bring the beloved car home. I had fantasized about this for three years. Now I had to pinch myself to maker sure the Cerbie was really here. One of the things I had always imagined was the Cerbie backfiring down the road behind my house. Well, it snapped, crackled and popped beautifully on the way home, and gave a mini thunderclap as I turned onto my street! Sheer poetry.

Needless to say, I didn’t wait too long before I started showing the Cerbie around its new digs!

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