So I finally bought myself a new car. And a new, new car at that; it had exactly 2 miles on the clock when I bought it. This is the first car (out of 9) that I’ve bought that wasn’t pre-owned. It will probably also be the only new car I buy, as I intend on driving this one into the ground. Much as I did to my last car – although that’s not completely driven into the ground (yet), as my eldest has claimed it as his own (despite not being able to get a full license for another 6 months…). I think it is indicative of the gaming generation that he thinks he will somehow be able to ‘mod’ it for a couple of grand and get it to the point where he can win street races in it. It’s a 12-year-old piece of crap with 140,000 miles on the clock, so good luck with that, son…
My last car was bright yellow (‘Sporting Yellow’ it’s officially called), and apparently that was ‘my thing’, as several friends have asked me if I was going to get another yellow car. I wasn’t particularly attached to the yellow (that’s just what it came in), but I will miss being able to find my car in a parking lot with absolute ease (I used to even be able to pick it out in uncovered parking from the air as I flew back into Houston after a business trip…). What I won’t miss is being targeted by the police. In the seven years I’ve had this car I think I’ve probably had seven tickets (I’m actually pretty careful once I get a ticket, as you can only have one ticket every 12 months dismissed by taking Driver’s Ed).
Now I’m not saying I haven’t broken any traffic laws, but in my defense, I’m not the fastest thing on the road, and I’m not the only person in Texas who apparently suffers from a “failure to indicate” (yup, had two of them). However, when the police see a bunch of cars streaming over the hill, and they’re sat in the dip with a speed gun in one hand and a donut in the other, I maintain that it is much easier for them to pick out and lock on to the bright yellow car in the pack than try to figure out which one of the several gray cars they tagged, and try to remember this as they follow it down. So this time around I have eschewed something unique or individualistic, and gone for a very unremarkable slate gray (or “Meteor Gray” as the manufacturer grandly has it…). I’ll bet you a dollar I don’t get a ticket in the next 12 months in this car (and I’m even leaving my radar detector in the old car…).
This new car does have some nice features (push-button entry, push-button start, rear camera, bluetooth, tinted windows,…) but my only real stipulation was that it had satellite radio. I had that in my last car (unpaid for the first six months, and the previous owner apparently forgot to cancel his subscription) and have grown to love it – or at least Sirius XMU (I never listen to anything else). When I got divorced several years ago, and we were divvying up our meager assets, I chose my two-door subcompact Chevy Cavalier over the much more expensive (and expansive) Ford Explorer – despite the fact that I won custody of the three kids and squishing them all into my car was painful, just because my car had satellite radio and the ex-wife’s car did not. And having just spent the past four days in a loaner without satellite radio whilst they fitted the satellite radio to my new car, I feel fully vindicated. Seriously, FM radio is just awful, what with all of the commercials and the inane DJ ‘banter’. I’d rather have fresh poo piped into my ears than have to endure that on my daily commute.
That said, the thing I am enjoying the most about the new car is having windows that open. On the Cavalier, the driver’s side window stopped working three or four years ago. First it would go down ok, but then it would only go up half an inch at a time, and required a day between attempts, but then a year or so back some idiot valet rolled it down (despite me sticking a big label on it saying “Do not wind down window”) and it refused to go up the last couple of inches. So I had to duct-tape the opening and hope that no-one with really skinny arms wanted to steal it. That was a minor inconvenience, especially with drive-throughs, but I worked out that I could just reverse through the drive-throughs and shout out of the passenger window. That always confused the bell-hops at Sonic!
But then six months ago the passenger side window stopped working as well, so I had to start conducting all of my drive-through transactions through the sun-roof, which proved to be an abject (sic) lesson in miscommunication: the average drive-through attendant couldn’t understand my ‘accent’ when I was talking directly into the microphone: “A large fries and an Oreo shake please”; “OK, so that’s a double-meat burger and a diet coke?”, and shouting through the sunroof exacerbated things to the point where I felt like just driving through the front window of the ‘restaurant’ to speak to them directly. Plus, I was worried that the sunroof would eventually stop working too, especially given the amount of rain we’ve been getting, and then how would I be able to use the drive-thru, or pass my license and proof of insurance to the nice officer who had pulled me over (they don’t like being told that you can’t open the window – they make you open the door and step out of the vehicle keeping your hands where they can see them, and it’s only one step from there to the full-cavity search…).
So, Mazda CX-5. A great car, and a huge improvement on the Cavalier. Despite the Mazda being an automatic, I can’t say that I even miss the Cav. But that could be because it is currently taking up all the space in my garage, as #1 son has it in pieces as he tries to fix the power windows motor. Ah, the enthusiasm of youth. I wonder how long it will be before he realizes, just as I did, that it’s just easier to buy a new car rather than try fixing the old one.
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