11 December 2011
All I want For Christmas is a Front Wheel Drive
11/12/11 10:21
Now that I’m working regular hours in a real office the pickup just wasn’t right for us any more. The mileage isn’t that good. A pickup truck is not too good on slick morning roads. Also the Prius is now seven years old. It’s still a really good car but we’ve been thinking it was time to get something a bit newer for long road trips. Also we only actually use the Mazda as a pickup truck every couple of months. As a friend suggested we could just rent a truck when we need one and be well ahead. So a couple of weeks ago we started looking for a different car.
OK, I’ll tell you the real reason. I’ve gotten the distinct impression from relatives that people think that this is the real me.
It’s not. Really I tried. I tried to be a pickup guy. I tried to be a gear grindin’, pedal stompin’, hairy chested, beer drinkin’, truck guy. But in the end I couldn’t pull it off. I’m a sports car guy. I like fast, high tech, cars that handle twisty roads well and sip fuel. I prefer Formula 1 over NASCAR. I’ll watch Rally over Monster Trucks. I’ll drink wine and a shot of saki over beer and a shot of Jack Daniels. I listen to Antonio Vivaldi, Phillip Glass, or Jean Michael Jarre, not Faith Hill, Brad Paisley, or Keith Urban
I don’t wear shorts. (except in the above picture)
I’m always going to be more at home in a Mini, or a Mustang, blasting up a mountain road than I’m ever going to be in a truck with a load of mulch. But my budget was limited. I needed to find something small and fun, and I gotta tell you the pickings were slim. Nobody seemed to want to make anything like the CRX we had in the early 1980’s. Sure there are two seat roadsters like the Mazda MX-5 but those aren’t much use for long road trips. They don’t have enough cargo space. Also, not to put too fine a line on it, I don’t like sunburned scalp. A convertible isn’t really for me.
I ended up looking first at Ford. I knew the Focus was used for Rally racing so maybe it would be OK. Um…. no. First they only SELL a four door version and four doors on a car just makes it look a bit pedestrian. Look at the great sports cars through history. Ferrari’s. Triumph’s, Lotus’s they all have two doors. A four door Porsche would just be wrong.
Actually, Porsche did make a four door car. The Cayenne. And yes, it was just wrong.
Secondly, and this is a bit technical, Ford cars come with SYNCH. SYNCH is a system that controls all of your systems. It allows you to manage the display, the AC, the radio, cruise control, the door locks, all sorts of things with voice commands. Trouble is that SYNCH is from Microsoft Automotive. I spend my days fixing bad Microsoft systems. I sure as heck don’t want to be stranded somewhere in the middle of the night because my CAR swallowed a virus and gave me a Blue Screen of Death. So Ford was out. While I was there the salesman did say one thing though that I appreciated. I mentioned that I wanted something small and efficient and he looked me right in the eyes and said, “How about an Explorer? The four cylinder ones get nearly as good a milage as the Focus or Fiesta.” We’ve laughed about that all week. It made the whole visit worthwhile.
Then we checked Toyota. The Prius was a great car so maybe the Yaris. Well, no. First it’s also four door only. Secondly it looks and feels like a small SUV. It had some nice features but though I might have been able to talk myself into getting one it wasn’t the RIGHT car. While at Toyota we did sit in the Scion tC. THAT was a nice car. A very nice two seat hatchback sports car. But the base price was about ten grand higher than we wanted to spend. Time to move on. Just for giggles we also sat in a PriusV. It’s the SUV version of the Prius. It’s $!!@&**! HUGE inside. We can seat five in our Prius. I figure the PriusV can seat around forty. I mean I’d feel obligated to get it in yellow and print School Bus over the windscreen. It’s enormous.
We then walked across the street to Honda. We weren’t to hopeful. Their advertising suggested they only made four door sedan versions of their cars but we figured maybe we could get a low milage used one that would do, or maybe the Fit wouldn’t be as bad as I expected. The salesman showed us around the lot. They had a few cars that were OK but nothing grabbed us. He then suggested that we look at the NEW CIVICs. We figured; what the heck. That was when he dropped a bombshell. They don’t talk about it much but they still make a two door CIVIC. It was a sedan not a hatchback but the trunk was large and the rear seats would fold down making it about 75% as useful as a hatch. We looked at one and the first thing that hit us was that the car has similar lines as the CRX. I sat in one. I liked it. Marsha got in the back. The seats were fairly comfortable. She liked it. We went for a test drive.
Now THAT’s what I’m talking about.
A light clutch. A good five speed, really slick looking electronic display. Two blue lines in the display even change colour depending on how efficiently you were driving. Green for efficient, blue for gas guzzling, an infinite number of shades of teal in between, and teal is my favourite colour. We went around the loop on Jingle Pot Road and it was a blast. It’s a twisty road that I attacked fairly aggressively. The car has 140hp, tight but not twitchy handling, and firm but not harsh suspension. It felt like a Mini that had been toned down a bit to make it more comfortable. We told him that we’d think about it and maybe come back in the afternoon.
We ran home and I checked the mileage. The EPA said that the car should get 26 city and 36 highway. Checking a number of other sites I found a lot of comments from actual owners of this car saying that they get that or even better in the real world. Low 40’s were definitely possible with care. So everything checked out. I’d found the car I’d wanted. We cleaned out the truck, drove down and traded it in. Now understand that I’d checked the listings. A good condition ’96 Mazda B3000 would bring in $1500 at MOST for trade in. That was not counting the broken seatbelt and the huge crack running across the windshield that mine had. We expected to get maybe a thousand for it. To our shock they gave us $1700 for the old beast. SCORE! and after some haggling, discussion of options and perks, and such, we settled on a price. Several hours later after the sun had gone down, we’d signed our name dozens of times and listened to a vast amount of verbiage that we immediately forgot, we drove off in a silver two door Honda CIVIC. The best part was when I started the car, the dash lit up like a Christmas Tree. I was in techy sports car guy heaven
I’m back.
Doug & Marsha
OK, I’ll tell you the real reason. I’ve gotten the distinct impression from relatives that people think that this is the real me.
It’s not. Really I tried. I tried to be a pickup guy. I tried to be a gear grindin’, pedal stompin’, hairy chested, beer drinkin’, truck guy. But in the end I couldn’t pull it off. I’m a sports car guy. I like fast, high tech, cars that handle twisty roads well and sip fuel. I prefer Formula 1 over NASCAR. I’ll watch Rally over Monster Trucks. I’ll drink wine and a shot of saki over beer and a shot of Jack Daniels. I listen to Antonio Vivaldi, Phillip Glass, or Jean Michael Jarre, not Faith Hill, Brad Paisley, or Keith Urban
I don’t wear shorts. (except in the above picture)
I’m always going to be more at home in a Mini, or a Mustang, blasting up a mountain road than I’m ever going to be in a truck with a load of mulch. But my budget was limited. I needed to find something small and fun, and I gotta tell you the pickings were slim. Nobody seemed to want to make anything like the CRX we had in the early 1980’s. Sure there are two seat roadsters like the Mazda MX-5 but those aren’t much use for long road trips. They don’t have enough cargo space. Also, not to put too fine a line on it, I don’t like sunburned scalp. A convertible isn’t really for me.
I ended up looking first at Ford. I knew the Focus was used for Rally racing so maybe it would be OK. Um…. no. First they only SELL a four door version and four doors on a car just makes it look a bit pedestrian. Look at the great sports cars through history. Ferrari’s. Triumph’s, Lotus’s they all have two doors. A four door Porsche would just be wrong.
Actually, Porsche did make a four door car. The Cayenne. And yes, it was just wrong.
Secondly, and this is a bit technical, Ford cars come with SYNCH. SYNCH is a system that controls all of your systems. It allows you to manage the display, the AC, the radio, cruise control, the door locks, all sorts of things with voice commands. Trouble is that SYNCH is from Microsoft Automotive. I spend my days fixing bad Microsoft systems. I sure as heck don’t want to be stranded somewhere in the middle of the night because my CAR swallowed a virus and gave me a Blue Screen of Death. So Ford was out. While I was there the salesman did say one thing though that I appreciated. I mentioned that I wanted something small and efficient and he looked me right in the eyes and said, “How about an Explorer? The four cylinder ones get nearly as good a milage as the Focus or Fiesta.” We’ve laughed about that all week. It made the whole visit worthwhile.
Then we checked Toyota. The Prius was a great car so maybe the Yaris. Well, no. First it’s also four door only. Secondly it looks and feels like a small SUV. It had some nice features but though I might have been able to talk myself into getting one it wasn’t the RIGHT car. While at Toyota we did sit in the Scion tC. THAT was a nice car. A very nice two seat hatchback sports car. But the base price was about ten grand higher than we wanted to spend. Time to move on. Just for giggles we also sat in a PriusV. It’s the SUV version of the Prius. It’s $!!@&**! HUGE inside. We can seat five in our Prius. I figure the PriusV can seat around forty. I mean I’d feel obligated to get it in yellow and print School Bus over the windscreen. It’s enormous.
We then walked across the street to Honda. We weren’t to hopeful. Their advertising suggested they only made four door sedan versions of their cars but we figured maybe we could get a low milage used one that would do, or maybe the Fit wouldn’t be as bad as I expected. The salesman showed us around the lot. They had a few cars that were OK but nothing grabbed us. He then suggested that we look at the NEW CIVICs. We figured; what the heck. That was when he dropped a bombshell. They don’t talk about it much but they still make a two door CIVIC. It was a sedan not a hatchback but the trunk was large and the rear seats would fold down making it about 75% as useful as a hatch. We looked at one and the first thing that hit us was that the car has similar lines as the CRX. I sat in one. I liked it. Marsha got in the back. The seats were fairly comfortable. She liked it. We went for a test drive.
Now THAT’s what I’m talking about.
A light clutch. A good five speed, really slick looking electronic display. Two blue lines in the display even change colour depending on how efficiently you were driving. Green for efficient, blue for gas guzzling, an infinite number of shades of teal in between, and teal is my favourite colour. We went around the loop on Jingle Pot Road and it was a blast. It’s a twisty road that I attacked fairly aggressively. The car has 140hp, tight but not twitchy handling, and firm but not harsh suspension. It felt like a Mini that had been toned down a bit to make it more comfortable. We told him that we’d think about it and maybe come back in the afternoon.
We ran home and I checked the mileage. The EPA said that the car should get 26 city and 36 highway. Checking a number of other sites I found a lot of comments from actual owners of this car saying that they get that or even better in the real world. Low 40’s were definitely possible with care. So everything checked out. I’d found the car I’d wanted. We cleaned out the truck, drove down and traded it in. Now understand that I’d checked the listings. A good condition ’96 Mazda B3000 would bring in $1500 at MOST for trade in. That was not counting the broken seatbelt and the huge crack running across the windshield that mine had. We expected to get maybe a thousand for it. To our shock they gave us $1700 for the old beast. SCORE! and after some haggling, discussion of options and perks, and such, we settled on a price. Several hours later after the sun had gone down, we’d signed our name dozens of times and listened to a vast amount of verbiage that we immediately forgot, we drove off in a silver two door Honda CIVIC. The best part was when I started the car, the dash lit up like a Christmas Tree. I was in techy sports car guy heaven
I’m back.
Doug & Marsha