Thinkcage

Over the past few weeks I have spent several afternoons car shopping. I have looked at countless models and have been serious enough to have driven the following cars:

• Toyota Celica GT
• Volkswagen Jetta 1.8T
• Volkswagen GTI 1.8T
• Mini Cooper
• Nissan 350Z

This was more or less my short list of cars from the beginning. I have weeded the list from there.

It was easy to remove the Toyota Celica and Nissan 350Z from the list. The Toyota, despite being an early favorite was the most disappointing. I rather like the styling of the car, even though I have my doubts about the long term likeability of that look, but in testing the car was the least fun to drive and had the fewest interior features. The interior style was bland and poorly designed. The 350Z, however, is a sports car in every sense of the word. It featured high power, high torque and a very “race car” feel in the interior. This is still one of my favorite cars on the road. Ultimately, though, the fact that it only seats two turned me off. I have a family of four and even though my next car will be used primarily for my daily commute to and from work, the fact that I can’t share my car with my family takes some of the fun out of it.

The final three, then are the Jetta/GTI and the Mini. I group the two Volkwagen models together because feature and trim-wise they are nearly identical. The choice between them comes down to body style. The Mini also can be equipped with very similar features. These three were the most fun to drive and really appealed to my sense of design with well-thought out features and beautiful design inside and out. Even the price is similar, leaving this mostly a matter of style. The VW models are both understated, but design-wise really appeal to me. The Mini is also very well designed, but in a more “hey look at me” style. That and its more classical feel leave me wondering if it fits my personal style as well as I feel the VW cars do. Still I can’t quite rule it out just yet.

It is interesting that my experiences at the various car dealerships were vastly different and seem to align with my choices. While I really feel that I am choosing a car based on its features and design, the dealer experience either effected or confirmed my choices. I found the Nissan, Mazda, and Toyota sales people to be pushy and lacking knowledge. These were auto mall stores that had several brands on the same gigantic lot. The Toyota salesman that showed me the Celica virtually ignored me, focusing on my wife who had some interest in another car. They even had us sign a purchaser agreement before looking that basically said we would buy a car if they met our terms. Kind of goes without saying, right? There was virtually no discussion of the car, itself, or why I might buy it – we were talking price and financing before I could ask about options. Very much the stereotypical high-pressure sale.

The Volkswagen and Mini Cooper (BMW) dealers were the complete opposite. Both salesmen started with a complete walk-around feature-by-feature discussion about the car. There was no pressure to buy or do anything else for that matter. Refreshingly, both salesmen seemed to be enthusiasts of the brand and knew the cars inside and out. Quite a refreshing experience. I just can’t tell how much that has played into my decision.

It has been a fun experience and I hope to make a decision and a purchase soon. Wish me luck!

Looks like slashdot has taken on the hybrid issue. There are a few interesting points about the fact that while the gas mileage may only be marginally better with hybrids, the emissions are substantially safer for the environment. Certainly food for thought.

I also found this blog post interesting: Why I didn’t buy a hybrid car

The car search continues. As previously stated, I’m in the hunt to replace my trusty 1987 Toyota Tercel.

The socially responsible green part of me is completely intrigued by the new gas-electric hybrid vehicles, particularly those by Toyota and Honda. By combining a gas and electric motor, these cars are more efficient, quieter, produce fewer harmful emissions, and use less gas. The engineering is particularly fascinating as the car’s gas engine and physical forces such as braking are channelled into the charging system for the electric motor’s batteries.

But claims of unreal gas mileage performance have given way to real-world tests. See, the biggest appeal of hybrid cars is the gas savings. Claims of 40, 50, or even 60 miles per gallon have been tossed around in recent months. But even that is not enough as the potential savings doesn’t even justify the premium in price that has cars such as Honda’s Civic Hybrid selling for several thousand dollars more than a comparably-equipped gasoline Civic. What is worse, is Several recent articles have put these cars to real-world tests showing that maybe they make even less financial sense than was previously thought.

I’m as green as the next guy and certainly want to do my part, but gas-electric hybrids aren’t cutting it for me just yet. Not only do they require the buyer to make many trade-offs in terms of option packages (the Prius’ very interesting bluetooth support notwithstanding), power, and overall appeal. They cost more and are in such demand right now that you can’t go see one or test drive one at a local dealership with many dealers reporting multi-month waiting lists to pay MSRP or more for a car sight-unseen that may not be all they claim in the first place.

I am will be truly happy when cars are less harmful and rely less on fossil fuels, but 2004 does not appear to be the year that happens.

I have been test-driving other vehicles like a madman, I hope to update soon.

I have lived in Oklahoma for nearly 10 years now but there is one thing I have yet to acclimate to — the weather. Here, weather is big news. On the local news broadcasts, weather is the lead story most of the time.

And of course tornados are big news. Living in Oklahoma, you can expect 2-4 nights a year (usually in April and May) that your entire family sits glued to the TV watching the weatherman track incoming storms. You stare at radar maps and listen to predictions about which cell has tornado potential, which ones are heading your way, and which suburbs should be hiding in a closet waiting for the worst. It can be quite surreal.

Tonight was one of those nights. Not too bad as these things go, but I rushed out of work to the sound of tornado sirens and constant, pre-empted radio coverage of the growing threat. Traffic was horrible and gave me plenty of time to watch and photography the evening storm. I watched as the storm slowly moved west to east as I drove right under it. Rotating clouds, ever lowering with tornado potential clearly evident. That was followed by heavy rain and hail. On one part of the road, the piled hail was more than six inches deep on the roads, rooftops, and grass. Several drivers got out of their cars to free spinning wheels. I have never seen that much hail accumulation.

That said, nothing serious developed in the area and I arrived safely home to my family. All that remains are a few photographs and the knowledge that a few more nights like this are in store.

One of the most practical and ingenious uses of RSS I have seen in a long time can be found at EbayListings.Net FreeBiddingTools.com. Here you can create custom RSS feeds that will monitor ebay searches of your construction. Looking for a certain item? Setup an RSS feed that will hourly (or as determined by your aggregator) show you all ebay auctions that match your query. Filterable by price, seller id, gallery, etc. Seems like you could also use it to monitor your own auctions as a seller. Very nice!

Its not clear from the site, but I suspect this is an ebay venture. Here’s hoping it will be integrated into the main site. It would be nice to have a “subscribe to this search” feature within ebay, itself.

Update: I just got an email from Brad who runs EbayListings.Net FreeBiddingTools.com, contrary to my assumption that it was an official ebay offshoot. Due to legal issues the site’s URL has changed to www.freebiddingtools.com. I’ve modified the link above to match.

New to the reality/home-improvement television genre is reality/auto-improvement. Shows like American Chopper are pretty entertaining even for a non-auto nut like me. The next phase, though, is the Trading Spaces/While You Were Out treatment on shows like MTV’s Pimp My Ride where a pro team takes someone’s wreck of a car and turns it into a chrome-wheeled hip-hop G-ride.

The newest show is Overhaulin’ on TLC. I’m looking forward to this one especially since 11 years of driving an extremely practical 72HP econo-ride has me feeling like the perfect candidate. I guess the hitch here is they do it to unsuspecting car owners and have to use some clever tactics to part them from their cars for a week. I’ll be watching for sure.