A few weeks before the Model Y reveal I was in a Tesla showroom standing next to a red Model 3 with the frunk open, getting a feel for the car rather than only the ticker. Sitting in that cabin mattered: the screen, the quiet, the sense that this was already a real product even while half the internet still argued Tesla could not build at volume. That visit is the photo on this post (17 February 2019), and it is the personal hinge for wanting an actual Tesla in our driveway.
On 5 March I bought again at US$294.79. Still the same underpriced thesis from January. Then on the evening of 14 March 2019 Tesla rolled a blue Model Y prototype onto the stage at Hawthorne. By the next day I was replaying the stream in Sydney. That was the moment I knew which Tesla I wanted in our driveway one day: crossover shape, glass roof, the Model 3 idea stretched into something a family could live with.
I was not ordering that night. Australian timing, right-hand drive, and family budgets are their own problem. But the equity story and the car story fused for me in a way the Model 3 alone had not quite managed. In March 2019 the Model Y is still a prototype and a conviction. The creators I already trusted (Tesla Daily, Solving the Money Problem, HyperChange, Whole Mars Catalog, Ride the Lightning) treat it as the volume product that could change the company. I agree, and after sitting in a Model 3 weeks earlier I already want one.
Buying again eleven days before the unveil was timing luck more than prophecy. Wanting the car the moment it appeared was not luck at all. It was the showroom visit meeting the Hawthorne stream, and deciding that if Australia ever gets Model Y timing right, that is the shape I want in the driveway. From here the buys and the car want are the same story.