May 27, 2004

9:42 a.m.

A Little Car Talk

Rose's surgery went fine, and she was walking gingerly around the house in between sitting up in bed taking it easy. I brought her some flowers and found a lovely vase in the basement to put them in. I rather suck at flower arrangement for some reason, but with a suggestion from Rose it turned out to be a spectacular bouquet. Later I went out to pick up sushi and we had a nice dinner. Mike had stayed home from work a few days so he could try to do things for her. She's so ridiculously independent, it's almost impossible to get her to stop doing anything. He kept saying, "Sit down! I'll do that!" and she'd say, "I'm getting up anyway! I might as well throw this trash in the garbage!" and so forth. Hey, if it was me, I'd let myself be pampered.

At dinner the conversation turned around to cars, because I've been thinking of switching out my dear little Honda sooner than originally planned, owing to the fact that I can no longer tolerate driving in the southern states all summer with no air conditioning. So Mike wanted to show me this certain car he'd looked at. We went up to the computer and he pulled up the Scion, which is made by Toyota. "It's ugly," he warned. "But it's so ugly it's cute!"

When I first saw the picture my brows went up in the most doubtful way. "Yes," I said, "It's ugly. But it's gone beyond cute, and just gotten ugly again." It looks like a shoebox, with a very square back end. Square without relief. How much? Well, around $15,000. Good gas mileage, even with an automatic transmission. Four doors, and a back hatch with a ton of storage when the back seats fold down. Automatic everything, and bear in mind my Honda has automatic NOTHING. I'm talking stick windows. There isn't even a light in my trunk for loading out in the middle of the night. So, all of this is Not Bad. But my heavens, I can't see myself driving around in a... in a "tool shed on wheels," according to Car & Driver!

So we looked at some other cars: Saturn, Subaru, Honda. They're all so much more expensive for the setup I need. We went back to Scion and looked again.

Changing the color helped a little.

When I got home, I looked up the Kelly's Blue Book value of my car, and was surprised to learn that it's worth about twice what I estimated in the private market. Then I did a sample calculation on the Scion site of how much I'd need to put down for a certain monthly payment, and that was also reasonable.

Now I'm researching articles on this not-yet-released vehicle. I'm not sold yet; it's ugly. The interior is unimaginative. But it has some good points.

Well, crap; I have to get ready for rehearsal. Anyway, when the time comes to test drive some cars, I want Rose with me. She's the car salesman's worst day on the job.