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the car story (so far)
Aug. 12th, 2010 02:24 pm
All right, guys. Here's the car story so far. It's not completely resolved, but I'm at an OK place with it right now so I can purge.
So first of all, there's not one, but two, cars involved now. There's the new car I bought recently, the Lexus HS 250h, which I picked up yesterday. I'm currently experiencing new car euphoria. I love it! The backup camera seems like it's a bit skewed, but I'm going to take it in to have them look at it over the weekend or something. Otherwise, it's great. Let's hope that's a minor thing and doesn't turn into a huge production, because I really need to have something go right.
My favorite new feature on the HS: it has a USB port, so I can plug my iPod in and cycle through songs and albums, etc., on my navigation panel. It'll display all the pertinent info for the song, like I'm listening to it on my computer. Wheee! Yeah, it's kinda clunky (I haven't yet figured out a way to fast forward through the alphabetical lists), but still nice. My IS 250 had an auxilary port so I could listen to the iPod through my car speakers, but I couldn't interact with it through the car.
The car is 85% recyclable, which is very cool. I've never had a hybrid before, but so far it seems to drive the same as my IS (though I never really took advantage of the IS's power). Being an anal/competitive sort of person, I now want to eke out the most gas mileage I can out of this thing and see how well I can do. (It's a luxury vehicle though, so it's not like the workhorse Prius, which can get like 50-60 mpg. Average for the HS is about 35 mpg.)
Oh, plus I like using a mouse to interact with the navigation/climate/audio panel rather than touching the screen (as I did on my IS). I don't like fingerprints on screens; it freaks me out when someone comes to my desk and points something out to me on my screen and TOUCHES IT. I'm like, just point, I know what you're pointing at, don't touch the screen! Yeah, bit of OCD going on there.
The only bad thing about this car-buying experience so far (knock on wood) is that I was mistaken about my payment dates, and so essentially, I've paid for an entire month's lease on the IS that isn't even mine anymore. Ughghghgh. Talk about flushing money down the toilet. I could have given it to a homeless man on the street and it wouldn't have been wasted in this fashion.
I'll post pictures soon. :D
But now comes the bad story. As I've said before, I wanted this car purchase to be the last one for a good long while. I hate the car buying process and never want to go through it again, if I can help it (this seems ironic now -- stick with me and you'll see why). That also means that since this is now MY car, and will be my car for a long time, I want to keep it nice.
I often take the bus in to work. I drive 2.5 miles to my nearest commute center (a church parking lot, in my case), park my car, then hop on the bus. I get home the same way. I also drive down the street every day to take my dog to a nearby park. My dog is not nice to car interiors. He gets aggressive when he sees people, and will scratch at the seats/doors. I don't want him to do this to the new car. I also don't want to leave my brand-new car in the church parking lot, exposed to the elements and other employees who park there who deliberately drive their worst cars and probably don't care if they get dinged -- but I do. So I came upon a brilliant idea. I should buy a cheap clunker vehicle that just needs to be reliable enough that I can use it to drive 7 miles a day (to/back from the bus; to/back from the park)!
( You can see where this is going. )
So first of all, there's not one, but two, cars involved now. There's the new car I bought recently, the Lexus HS 250h, which I picked up yesterday. I'm currently experiencing new car euphoria. I love it! The backup camera seems like it's a bit skewed, but I'm going to take it in to have them look at it over the weekend or something. Otherwise, it's great. Let's hope that's a minor thing and doesn't turn into a huge production, because I really need to have something go right.
My favorite new feature on the HS: it has a USB port, so I can plug my iPod in and cycle through songs and albums, etc., on my navigation panel. It'll display all the pertinent info for the song, like I'm listening to it on my computer. Wheee! Yeah, it's kinda clunky (I haven't yet figured out a way to fast forward through the alphabetical lists), but still nice. My IS 250 had an auxilary port so I could listen to the iPod through my car speakers, but I couldn't interact with it through the car.
The car is 85% recyclable, which is very cool. I've never had a hybrid before, but so far it seems to drive the same as my IS (though I never really took advantage of the IS's power). Being an anal/competitive sort of person, I now want to eke out the most gas mileage I can out of this thing and see how well I can do. (It's a luxury vehicle though, so it's not like the workhorse Prius, which can get like 50-60 mpg. Average for the HS is about 35 mpg.)
Oh, plus I like using a mouse to interact with the navigation/climate/audio panel rather than touching the screen (as I did on my IS). I don't like fingerprints on screens; it freaks me out when someone comes to my desk and points something out to me on my screen and TOUCHES IT. I'm like, just point, I know what you're pointing at, don't touch the screen! Yeah, bit of OCD going on there.
The only bad thing about this car-buying experience so far (knock on wood) is that I was mistaken about my payment dates, and so essentially, I've paid for an entire month's lease on the IS that isn't even mine anymore. Ughghghgh. Talk about flushing money down the toilet. I could have given it to a homeless man on the street and it wouldn't have been wasted in this fashion.
I'll post pictures soon. :D
But now comes the bad story. As I've said before, I wanted this car purchase to be the last one for a good long while. I hate the car buying process and never want to go through it again, if I can help it (this seems ironic now -- stick with me and you'll see why). That also means that since this is now MY car, and will be my car for a long time, I want to keep it nice.
I often take the bus in to work. I drive 2.5 miles to my nearest commute center (a church parking lot, in my case), park my car, then hop on the bus. I get home the same way. I also drive down the street every day to take my dog to a nearby park. My dog is not nice to car interiors. He gets aggressive when he sees people, and will scratch at the seats/doors. I don't want him to do this to the new car. I also don't want to leave my brand-new car in the church parking lot, exposed to the elements and other employees who park there who deliberately drive their worst cars and probably don't care if they get dinged -- but I do. So I came upon a brilliant idea. I should buy a cheap clunker vehicle that just needs to be reliable enough that I can use it to drive 7 miles a day (to/back from the bus; to/back from the park)!
( You can see where this is going. )
