California Nitro Owners

My wife and I would be interested in joining a Nitro club in the Southern California area. It will be a few more years until I can retire for the second time. I retired at 50 last year from the City of Riverside.

I saw someone's Nitro pic's here that had taken there Nitro to Pismo beach. My wife and I are at a conference in Solvang and we went up to Pismo for the evening after my classes and had a wine, cheese and fruit dinner on the beach in the Nitro while the sun was setting. Very fun! I did not test the limits of the 4 wheel drive in the sand, but as I said earlier, it works well in the snow. We stopped in Lancaster on the way from Big Bear Lake to Solvang and I tested driving a manual transmission Nitro and found out just what I had thought. The six speed makes much better use of the 210hp and is quite responsive. I love my wife's Nitro, but I don't care much for the get up and go with the automatic trans. I am going to work harder now to sell my 2004 Toyota Sequoia so I can get another Nitro. I just have to find a dealer that has a "Sunburst Orange" Nitro, so I can see it in person. The six speed 4x4 is just what I want. Plenty of room inside, modern options and features, comfortable seats. I will have to get my dealer to add many options that the SXT cannot be ordered with, such as the gaming system for the kids, the U-Connect hands free phone option for me, the navigation system in the "My-Gig" radio (when it becomes available again).

I am thinking that I might install an airbag lift system that will raise the car a few inches on demand, if I am driving slowly while off road, and set it up to also raise the car when it is in first gear or reverse, so I can install larger wheels and tires. It would run at its normal height the rest of the time and while parked. What do you think?