Test Drive

Okay, I hate car shopping. I really do. But not quite as much as I hate making my commute in the Űberbeater.

So I axed Mo if she'd be game to test drive cars. Of course she would!

Well, what she really wanted was to play in the ball pit at CarMax.



I went there because they have a little of everything. Their inventory is pretty much out of range, as they specialize in cars that are scarcely broken in.

Mo also tried to hijack a golf cart. Last time we went to CarMax, they drove us down to the car we were test driving in a golf cart, so I think she thought that was just part of the routine. Luckily, we were able to pull her off before she figured out how to make the thing go straight forward, really fast, right into the side of a used BMW.

We scoped out a PT Cruiser. I don't really like them, except for being more interesting than most cars. But they're cheap, and I thought they'd be better on gas than they turn out to be. If I wanted that kind of gas mileage, I'd just get a minivan. Which is what I'd get if I could find one that ran on politicians lies or the stupidity of prime time TV, or some other limitless and free resource.

A Sienna that runs on Dick Cheney's evil or Hillary Clinton's lust for power, that's a car you can tip your hat to.



Then I spotted a Camry. Except it wasn't a Camry, it was a Corolla. Out of range, price-wise, but damn, little cars got big.

I test drove a Civic, too, and it was a monster as well. I liked the Corolla better, between the two, but both are bigger than Accords and Camry's used to be. I guess that's why they've rolled out the Matrix, Yaris, Fit, etc., to fill the void left when they up-sized their whole lineup to the point where there'd be no such thing as a Japanese compact.

I like the Fit, actually, though it's so new there's none with enough miles on them to put the in even theoretical grasp.

And maybe part of the appeal of the Corolla is the best car I ever had was a Corolla. An '87 Corolla FX-16. Drove the shit out of it. Put 210,000 miles on top of the 32,000 it had when I bought it for $7000. Of course, Corollas have gotten as much more expensive as they've gotten bigger.