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I drive a Saturn wagon. It's nine years old and has 128k on it. With my 70 mile round-trip commute, I make sure to get regular maintenance done, so it's in reasonable shape - for its age and planned obsolescence status. It's an American car, after all; it's not made to go this far. Nothing major is wrong with it - yet - but lots of plastic bits have broken. Annoying things, like the driver's side sunvisor snap and the overhead light clips (the light falls down, suspended from wires, and has to be awkwardly jammed back in...)
It's also black and has no air conditioning. Granted, I live in the Bay Area so it's not as bad as many places, but still. The car is an oven and doesn't cool down if it's a sunny day. It can be 70 degrees out but 95 inside.
Can you tell I'm getting sick of this beast? It's had a decent run but it's time to consider alternatives. Originally we were going to wait until next year, when the wife is (knock on formica) gainfully employed and we're no longer paying school tuition. Dunno if I can make it that long though.
We haul a lot of stuff and weight to SCA events. I don't want a minivan or a pickup, so I'm looking mainly at large wagons and SUV/wagon crossovers. The biggest problem has been finding something that not only has more cubic, but more payload capacity. The Subaru Forester, for example, only hauls 50 lbs more than the Saturn. We could get that increase by committing to a diet!
One of the vehicles worth considering is building a hybrid version next year. That might be an incentive to wait since I don't think gas prices are going back down. I haven't been able to try any test drives, though, so we're not even at the serious consideration stage. I'd like to get there, but the father-in-law bureaucracy comes first...
What I'm reading: Peter F. Hamilton, The Neutronium Alchemist
It's also black and has no air conditioning. Granted, I live in the Bay Area so it's not as bad as many places, but still. The car is an oven and doesn't cool down if it's a sunny day. It can be 70 degrees out but 95 inside.
Can you tell I'm getting sick of this beast? It's had a decent run but it's time to consider alternatives. Originally we were going to wait until next year, when the wife is (knock on formica) gainfully employed and we're no longer paying school tuition. Dunno if I can make it that long though.
We haul a lot of stuff and weight to SCA events. I don't want a minivan or a pickup, so I'm looking mainly at large wagons and SUV/wagon crossovers. The biggest problem has been finding something that not only has more cubic, but more payload capacity. The Subaru Forester, for example, only hauls 50 lbs more than the Saturn. We could get that increase by committing to a diet!
One of the vehicles worth considering is building a hybrid version next year. That might be an incentive to wait since I don't think gas prices are going back down. I haven't been able to try any test drives, though, so we're not even at the serious consideration stage. I'd like to get there, but the father-in-law bureaucracy comes first...
What I'm reading: Peter F. Hamilton, The Neutronium Alchemist
