My New Car
December 14, 2007 · Filed Under Blog
This week, I got a new car and I love it. I have never had a brand new car before, and to be able to pick it up and see 70 miles on the odometer is a wonderful feeling. I ended up with a silver Toyota Camry XLE with navigation, leather, heated seats, keyless entry and starter, MP3 audio port, satellite radio, butt warmers and a “spoiler” which I didn’t necessarily want, but happened to be on the car that was in stock and most closely matched my desired attributes. Getting here was quite a long process though. I thought about many different cars. I drove many different cars. I thought hard about spending a lot more money and tried to consider spending far less money. I ended up kind of in the middle with lots and lots of toys.
As I said before, I tried out lots and lots of cars before I came to the decision on the Camry. I will be honest right now and say that the Camry isn’t necessarily the sexiest automobile in the world. It isn’t a sports car. It isn’t quite nice enough to be considered a luxury car. It isn’t rugged like an SUV or different enough to be one of the cool new crossovers. As much as I would love to say that it doesn’t play into it, the whole ego thing is a big part of buying a car. It isn’t something I need necessarily, but I would be lying if I said that it hasn’t been fun driving a brand name like Lexus for the past 5 years or so, between two cars. Then again, I never had one of those cars new. In fact, in both cases, I got great deals from company executives who were looking to unload their cars off of company deals.
So, in my travels to find the next automobile, I drove two Lexus’. I drove the comparable car to what I just turned in, the ES 350. I also drove the IS 250 all wheel drive. Those cars were both amazing. Then again, nowadays, these cars both run somewhere north of $40,000 once you outfit them with what I would consider an acceptable amount of toys, the biggest being a navigation system. I know the whole navigation thing seems like an overdone feature that most people don’t need. I can’t totally disagree with that opinion. What I would say is that it is the kind of thing that once you have it, you can’t go back. It isn’t quite as dire a need as air conditioning, but I have had to drive rental cars without navigation after having navigation and it is worse than that naked feeling I get when I don’t have my wallet in my back right pocket. Anyway, despite those cars having cool stuff like air conditioned seats and everything else, it seemed that I wasn’t going to be able to make that car happen for less than $600 or more per month.
Next, I spent some time driving the new Honda Accord. I had an Accord for a while in college and I found that to be a great car. I drove the new Accord and almost pulled the trigger a couple of times. Then I went and drove one with the navigation system installed and decided that it wasn’t for me. The nav screen is pretty far away from the driver, and you have to use some wacky dial to control it as opposed to the touch screen offered in the Lexus and the Toyota. As strange as it may seem, the dial-operated navigation control was enough for me to rule out the Accord. Then I was reading that some people don’t like the new Accord because it rides loudly and Honda may have screwed something up in the wind tunnel portion of their redesign. That made me happy.
I considered driving a lot of other cars. I spent a good amount of time looking at Nissan. I have loved the Murano for a while, but that car can also cost up toward $40,000 once it is outfitted with cool stuff. I like the Toyota Highlander, but the redesign put it on the chassis of the Avalon instead of the Camry, and it seems so much bigger than it used to. It, like the Murano, can cost as much as $40,000 too. Seriously, people, when did cars start to reach the $40k region instead of just sitting comfortable in the $30k region? Pretty much any car can cost $30k today. There are Hyundai’s that can cost over 30 now I think.
And that is where the story ends. I got the Camry with all the toys. I also decided to go with a slightly less fiscally responsible option and lease it for 3 years and 45,000 miles. I really like the idea of not having to deal with the problems that I have dealt with my entire life with cars that are over 50,000 miles and heading toward 100k. I don’t want to deal with those types of problems anymore if I don’t have to. And not dealing with those problems is worth something to me, to be sure. So, now I can drive comfortably, quickly, and with a headphone jack to play anything that I can put on my iPod, while always having access to shortcuts and back roads via the navigation system.
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Because snow is falling right now and our only car with heated seats is now in Virginia in “storage”, waiting till the next time we go out to our condo, I read your list of extras very closely and I was very envious! Then, I noticed that not only do you have heated seats, but it appears you also have something else that you call, “butt warmers”. What are those? I would hate to thing there is some kind of warming device I have overlooked. Or are you just kind of obsessed on that subject? (smile). Not that there’s anything wrong with that….
By the way, I was so busy being funny that I forgot to say your car looks gorgeous! Congratulations!
It the picutre of the push button ignition I noticed that you have very girlish fingers. You should probably clip your fingernails. Just sharing my observations.
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