My New Car
With my choices down to the Outback Sport/Impreza 5-door and the Legacy Outback I realized I had to make a decision. So I enlisted the help of the massive online community over at the Car Lounge. They have now spoken.
My new car is a 2008 Subaru Outback 2.5i, Newport Blue over Silver (yes, it’s a two-tone!), with heated seats but just a CD-player and no CD-changer. It’s also an automatic because they ran out of manuals the day I decided to buy it and the 2009′s didn’t have the 0.0 APR and the rebate. So, one’s got to take the good (cheaper cost) with the bad (auto trans). It’s got significantly more room than the Outback Sport/Impreza yet gets the same mileage (probably because they have the same engine – 2.5l – and the same transmission and are withing 300 pounds of each other) and more room for passengers. Seems like a win-win for me.
Just a couple things so far that annoy me. First, the lack of steering wheel audio controls. My old Dodge Dakota had these. My wife’s Xterra has them. And while the center stack is closer (I can actually change/use the radio quite easily which isn’t possible w/ the Xterra or Dakota) I’ve got this muscle-memory for the steering wheel audio controls. So I’ll have to break my habit. Second, and this is the worst one so far, the radio doesn’t get louder when you speed up and get quieter when you slow down. I don’t know why this is so. I’ve not had a vehicle’s audio do this since my 1991 Dodge Ramcharger.
The great thing about this car is that it stops really well. Perhaps I’m not the ‘target’ audience since I came from a seven-year-old truck but the four-wheel disc brakes with ABS work really well (as I found out on my commute home this evening thanks to a speeding ambulance changing the stop lights on me with no notice) and it’s super-duper quiet which is a lot different from the old V8 truck. Plus, this car is partial zero-emissions vehicle which (truth be told) means almost nothing to me since I (a) dislike California as a matter of principle, and (b) don’t drive that much. But, since I love to (a) use my BBQ grill, (b) fly in planes, (c) participate in the mass-market consumer-driven economy of world goods, and (d) fart a lot, I think my choice will be helpful to the environment (even though I want ANWAR opened up, like coal-gasification, and dislike the EPA mileage requirements but love high gas taxes) and that makes me smile.
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Thursday 10 July 2008 9:56 pm
By Mom, Friday 11 July 2008 @ 7:19 am
Love the new car! Enjoy!