I used the example of finding my dream project car to test ideating in my last posts and here is the follow-up no one wanted as to what the answer is. If you looked at the last post on ideating with hats, which didn’t work super well but was useful to do, my example was a prompt about me and a dream car, or what I am referring to as my final fun car once I get kids out of the house. My first car was a 71 super beetle I completely restored, and then I had another bug (74 super), a 93 subaru loyale (that drove me across the country and I lived out of for some months), a POS Saturn SC2, a 1992 2nd Gen 4Runner, a 1993 Mercedes 350 SDL, and now a then brand new 2013 4Runner. Of note is I learned stick on a 1983 F150. I love old cars, and windows down (no AC is fine) and live in a place that floods and want to take boards to the beach. Also having something like this is fun to wrench on with the kids, especially my youngest. So top choices were:
- an old bug
- an old truck (basically lets me live my muscle car dream, but with a bed)
- El Camino/Ranchero/GMC Caballero for same reasons as #2
Note things like early bronco and FJ40 are out of bounds due to silly high prices, and Jeeps have never been on my radar.
But then I did my ideating, which wasn’t great, so went back to a very long convo with Claude (sonet I assume) and finally keyed in on what I actually wanted (also based on market research of something more like $10k or less): a soft top SUV with a decent size tub. Of course Claude is great at summarizing, which is what I did once I realized we had found the answer, and I wanted a cheat sheet based on years and features.
So here is my own personal cheat sheet for whenever I actually have the resources and time to pull the trigger.