So I bought a new car.
And I can hear what you’re thinking, David, what happened to the perfectly good car you bought in 1993? Three new cars in 24 years: where did this profligacy come from? And you paid cash? Yes, you’re right, but there it is.
Leta and I picked up the as-yet-unchristened vehicle—a 2007 Accord Coupe LX—from Bill Page Honda on Saturday. The dealer did an excellent job of responding to my online request-for-quote with a good price and without a lot haggling and games about extended warranties and extraneous add-ons. As Accords go, it’s the bottom-of-the-line model: the only extra accessory on the car is the mud guards in the rear wheelwells. But it’s one of the scarcer colors, a pearlized graphite gray with some overtones of blue, and it has the nice quality of shining differently in varying lights. It took some persistent questioning on my part to get the dealer to agree to schlep out of the Eastern Shore of Maryland to find one of the right color. Yes, I understand the quote. How much for one in graphite? No, I don’t have a second color choice.
As I said, as-yet-unchristened; the car doesn’t have any mojo yet, let alone any scratches. At least it picked up some road dust during Sunday’s thunderstorms. I’m not even sure yet whether it’s a boy or a girl.
I”m keeping Alberta, the ’93 Explorer, in service for the muddy jobs, the cargo hauling, and the three days of each D.C. winter when 4WD is a really good idea. (Alberta just turned over the double-century on her odometer.) The Accord will be taking over the daily commuting duties and the Beltway crawls to rehearsal, saving a reasonable quantity of gas in the process. It’ll be so nice to stop and go on I-495 with air conditioning that works full-time. Any commute can be fun for a while when you have a new machine to figure out, to find out how it responds.
I gave of lot of thought to buying a Toyota Prius, and I drove my friend Richard’s around the block once, but in the end, a conventional drivetrain, conventional styling, and the right number of doors (two) prevailed. So my driving will not be as squeaky-clean green as it could be, and I’m okay with that. Nor is it one of the luxury rockets that most of the guys I work with drive.
I can’t get over how quiet the car is inside, and I have more legroom that in the Explorer. But, as you might expect, the throw of the stickshift is a lot different. I’m still trying to start from a stop in third and to downshift from fifth to second. I haven’t yet established the TSA policy on liquids in the car: this morning I carefully sipped my coffee from the travel mug only at red lights, and closed it up again before getting underway.