The other thing that has been taking up a lot of my time lately has been car shopping. As much as I love the CRX, it was starting to show it's age of seventeen years, despite all the spit 'n polish. It was also less-than-ideal for road trips given it's small size, what with both mine & the girlfriend's families living an hour away. And she didn't find the spartan accommodations (power nothing, 5-speed, no A/C) nearly as charming as I did.
I drove an F-150 (I'm not a Ford guy, nor a truck guy - I've owned them in the past, but really don't have a need for one, plus the cost of gas woulda killed me), a couple Jettas (too small) a couple Passats (too expensive) and decided to look at a 2005 Impala at a dealer near me - I snuck away from studying for a few hours on Sunday and drove to the dealership, only to find I drove to the wrong one - they actually had two locations for used cars. The salesman told me he had a 2006 Impala, but no 2005's. This was discouraging to me, as 2005 was the last year of the cool round taillights ("Why would they do away with an Impala trademark?!?") I wondered. The salesman encouraged me to take a look at the '06 anyway and pulled it around: It was white. Probably my least favorite color for any car. I told it was out of my price range anyway, but he encouraged me to drive it, and to my surprise, I really really liked it. I even decided the white looked pretty good on it, especially if you tinted the windows. Even the new taillights were starting to grow on me a little bit. I had already received financing from my credit union and knew where I wanted my payment to be, so this car wasn't even a possibility. The dealership convinced me to let them run my info through their system, and they got me a rate two points lower than my credit union (which I just assumed would be my best option). Boom, $2k more car for the same payment. I yanked my stereo equipment out of the Honda and drove it home. (I originally wasn't going to trade the CRX - I knew I could easily get $2K for it, but only after I dropped $500 in it for new shocks & brakes, plus a whole weekend's work of detailing... I decided for a few hundred bucks difference, I would rather just be done with it. Of course, now my friends are coming out of the woodwork and berating me for not giving them first refusal rights). I give you the new whip:
(That's a stock photo of course - mine's already too dirty to be suitable for photography)
It's quite different to drive - remember, I've only owned one other car built in this decade, and that was a Jeep Wrangler with zero options. It has all kinds of power stuff and digital geegaws and doodads and blue LED's everywhere and a jack to plug my iPod into the radio. When the temperature dropped below 32 degrees tonight, it actually warned me that there could be ice on the road. Between that and the remote starter, I feel like Michael Knight. I'll probably get the windows tinted as dark as I can get away this summer, and might look into finding an SS spoiler for the trunk, but that's about it.
The other big difference was when I filled it up - $35.00!!! If the CRX was on fumes I might squeeze $15 into it. And that would last me a week (46 mile round-trip commute to work 5 days a week, plus 30-odd miles to school and back 3-4 nights a week). That's gonna take some getting used to...
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