Posted under: fluff, local news
Maybe procrastination has saved me again? I was going to buy a brand-new, decked-out Prius this winter until the news broke that the 2010 Priuses are going all HAL on people. Creepy. Maybe it’s not such a good idea to make machines that think they’re smarter than us? Every time I get a new computer, I have to spend hours deselecting everything that Microsoft has automatically preselected for me without my consent, from the damned “grammar check” to the display of my folders, etc. (I miss my Macs!)
Maybe I’ll go ahead and give my old car that oil change that’s 3 months and 1,500 miles overdue, and wash it for the first time in 10 months, since it looks like I’ll be driving it for a little while longer. (I’ve been known to go for oil changes just once a year, or every 8 or 9,000 miles!) Its tires are worse than bald, it looks like someone must be living in it, and it smells like a fart, but aside from the driver’s side front and rear windows not going up and down as they should, the thing has really given me zero mechanical trouble in the eight years I’ve owned it. (And it was 4 years old when I bought it–so it owes me nothing, not even windows that go up and down when I press the button, especially considering my chronic neglect and/or abuse.)
Why do I treat my car so carelessly? I’d never permit my house or my person to appear publicly in the equivalant state of poor maintenance and/or deshabille. I think it’s probably karmic justice for being such a snob and a jerk when I was an adolescent and my mother drove an old, beat-up brown station wagon. I remember ducking down below the window if we pulled up in traffic next to a classmate so that ze wouldn’t see me riding in my parents’ car. Except there’s no “justice”–clearly, driving a car old enough to be in Middle School and refusing to maintain it is my choice. I really am almost entirely unmoved by desire for cars, and it always seems like I have something better to do than to go to the carwash or the Quickie Lube. I really don’t care what I drive, so long as it gets me where I need to go.
So long as it’s not a minivan. You’ll never catch me behind the wheel in one of those things!
Indyanna on 05 Feb 2010 at 1:51 pm #
Oh, lord. Is this one going to be on the test? Or maybe this one IS the test? Were we having a test today?!? Since automotivity is doubtless one of the meta-sites of [modern] mansplanation, if not even its origin point, there’s no way of going near this one except carefully. But I’m legendary for driving cars that look at first sight (and actually, long after that) like floating debris fields on oily second-tier harbors. And I can truthfully confess that I never even heard of “The Car Guys” until Historiann gave me a lift to the Greyhound station one day many years ago. In truth, I don’t think I ever heard of NPR until that occasion either.
So, with that, after using years of “fumes equity” to attain a one-third ownership stake in the Pennsylvania Turnpike (with our fine Commonwealth and some LLC in Barcelona), I’ve become a zealot about oil changes. My local shop out here only requires them every 4,000 miles, rather than the standard 3K, so with that small indulgence, I keep my GPS device pointed toward their oil bay on a regular basis. And I’m somewhat of a Tory on tires as well. When the highway hums “don’t tread on me,” I’m like, begone, snake! I got through the ’80s peeling the last 11,000 miles off of more rusty VW bugs than you could shake a tire gauge at, one every year until inspection time. Then I cross-platformed it to a slightly-used Sentra and then a Civic, which have each given me close to a decade of relatively problem free service. If I could just finish things off with a ten year gig as the Comcast Endowed Professor of the Big Picture at the school I can see out my back window when I’m back east, I think I’d kick over the ownership thing itself and sign on with one of those car share outfits.
digger on 05 Feb 2010 at 2:24 pm #
I’m hard on my car. I bathe it perhaps 1x per year; any other bathing occurs when it rains. I just took it in for some long overdue maintenance when it wouldn’t start for the first time in its life. I refer to it as “The Rolling Accumulation” and a colleague asked me with a straight face not long ago, “Do you even know what’s in your car?” The one thing I try to be really good about is oil changes, though I’ve heard that cars these days only really need a change every 6k, I do try to get in ever 3k. Plus the nice folks at the quickie-lube vacuum my front seat (they’d vacuum the back seat too, if they could find it under The Accumulation). Isn’t it environmentally friendly to drive ‘em til they die, instead of trading up to a whole new carbon debt every couple of years?
Historiann on 05 Feb 2010 at 2:36 pm #
Digger–that’s my sense. At least, I tell myself that I’m not just being cheap and lazy–I’m being as green as green can be. (I get 33-34 miles/gal., and put only about 9,000-11,000 miles/year on my car, so I’m not the biggest carbon nightmare out there.)
Indyanna: I too wish the public transit options were better. But yours are much better than mine, I can guarantee that! (You at least have the option of the Amtrak. There is a carpool that runs from Potterville to Fort Fun and back on weekdays, but it’s arranged around staff and not faculty schedules. (7 a. departure, 4:30 return, so no faculty meetings, no way to get home in an emergency, etc. make it impractical.)
Indyanna on 05 Feb 2010 at 3:10 pm #
Yeah, I truthfully knew you weren’t doing a buy-and-bust CFM (“Call for Mansplainers”) sting with this post, but this would have been a perfect time and place and topic for one, and it’s interesting to imagine the theatrical mayhem of the ensuing melodrama. Or maybe not.
Anyway, I’m giving more and more of my cross-state custom to Amtrak these days. I just wish there was a convenient overnight train, as in my childhood daze! I can report a pretty steady 13,000 miles per year since I started academically driving a long long time ago.
Ruth on 05 Feb 2010 at 3:52 pm #
Wow, Historiann, I’m really looking forward to your picking me up from the airport.
Janice on 05 Feb 2010 at 3:54 pm #
We just got rid of our minivan a year ago after realizing that we were no longer travelling with two medium-to-large dogs, two kids and assorted kid stuff. Just usually one small dog, two kids and much less kid stuff (amazing how that happens as they mature). But the minivan was easy to schlep just about anything around in. And you could see for miles and miles, it seemed, right down the road.
We’re an oddity in our neighbourhood/community. We have one car. Most households around here have at least two, usually three. Nope. Too pricey to keep up with, especially while my husband can only find part-time work. So we both spend a LOT of time in our one car, ferrying the kids and each other around since the public transit doesn’t really make a convenient connection between our work and our residence. (At least two transfers for his campus and one transfer or a couple miles walking at the end for me.)
That said, our new(ish) VW is wonderful. Great mileage, only needs servicing every 15k kilometres. Now if I could get the weather and my non-neurotypical kid (who hates car washes) to cooperate so I could give it a wash! And no recalls, at least not yet!
Historiann on 05 Feb 2010 at 4:09 pm #
Janice–my strategy for my next car is silver or grey, so that the dust and road salt and whatever doesn’t show too much. I would love it if VW made a hybrid bug, but it doesn’t look to me like the mileage is very good in that car. (Since it’s just me, 95% of the time, driving alone, I don’t really need much trunk or backseat space.) The new bugs are the cutest cars, design-wise–I just wish they were better on the carbon emissions front.
Ruth–don’t worry. I’ll rent a nice car to pick you up in! (Or, at least deodorize mine. I was hoping you wouldn’t be reading the blog today. . . )
koshem Bos on 05 Feb 2010 at 4:24 pm #
My inferiority complex is vastly boosted by this post/exchange. My car is clean, in good condition, oil changes are on time and the car ain’t cheap. God, what have I done, not again.
Just to pour oil on the fire, my car is high there in Toyota dynasty. It’s a 2005 model with a million small flaws. Toyota has been giving us the finger for a long time.
Comrade PhysioProf on 05 Feb 2010 at 11:35 pm #
I wish I had a fucking Bentley.
Fratguy on 06 Feb 2010 at 8:24 am #
Right on Historiann!! Personally I never saw the point of giving so much as a rat’s hindmost, safety and reliability issues aside, about a depreciating asset.
Sweet Sue on 06 Feb 2010 at 8:57 am #
If you want a hybrid, Ford’s Fusion is supposed to be very good, it won some prestigious car of the year award.
Susan on 06 Feb 2010 at 9:03 am #
I am religious about oil changes, checking tires etc. I keep planning to go to the car wash, but there are so many more pressing obligations — like eating, working, sleeping, reading blogs, exercise, etc. — that the car wash comes low. (Though the local thing here is to have a car wash to raise money for a funeral, and I’ve thought of stopping for one of those.)
Moving out west — and getting a campus job — has increased my mileage from about 7500 miles a year to 12,000 or so, I think. I could take the bus to work, but the last bus to leave campus for my neighborhood leaves at (this is GREAT planning) the minute my class is supposed to end.
Historiann on 06 Feb 2010 at 9:08 am #
Sweet Sue: I just looked at the hybrid Fusion. Its mileage is only notionally better than my crapmobile. (41 highway/36 city, whereas I’m getting 33-34 mpg. in the combination of highway and city driving now.)
I hate my car, but I don’t think I love any new cars enough to justify the expense. And, the most I drive at a stretch is 32 miles. I’m not driving out of state or across the country in that thing, so I’m not afraid of being stranded far from where anyone can retrieve me.
What I really want is a Judy Jetson flying car. Or a solar-powered VW bug. Until that happens, I’ll just cope with the fartmobile.
Comrade PhysioProf on 06 Feb 2010 at 1:33 pm #
You know you’d love to be cruising around in this beauty:
http://www.autospectator.com/cars/files/images/2007-Bentley-Arnage-22.jpg
Historiann on 06 Feb 2010 at 3:07 pm #
Only if it came with a driver!
Indyanna on 06 Feb 2010 at 3:41 pm #
Make that drivership a fellowship progam and I might apply for a one-month gig! As for back here, I’m thinking more in terms of a decommissioned surplus personnel carrier. We’re under about two feet of snow, the fourth deepest snow ever to lay on General Braddock’s grave, some say. After a similar blizzard in Philadelphia some years back I heard clanking sounds under my second story corner window. A look out found a National Guard APC from the ornate Italianate armory a few blooks away idling at the corner of Locust and 22nd, with four youngish weekend warriors perched in the four hatch-holes on top, playfully firing snowballs around the square. Apparently this would go into the books as a “training” mission. They were sitting at a red light, and I thought, if you’ve personally just declared martial law and there’s no traffic for blocks, why wait for green?
Vance Maverick on 06 Feb 2010 at 6:22 pm #
The gas mileage on new cars is weirdly poor. Like many here, I’m beginning to think about replacing the beater I drive, a ‘93 Honda Civic that’s can no longer deny its age; but it still gets 35-40 mpg, and as far as I can see, only a few hybrids and the Smart do that well today. (I suppose they must be heavier and/or more powerful, but I wish that tradeoff hadn’t been made for me.)
FrauTech on 06 Feb 2010 at 10:38 pm #
Vance-mileage got worse when safety standards were upped in the nineties, along with engines getting bigger. Safer cars are heavier cars, and so today’s cars have slightly more horsepower but like you said, not much in the way of improved mpg for those of us with older cars.
I say who cares if you don’t get your car washed all that often. That’s like arguing over wearing heels versus flats to me; all about what’s important/comfortable for you. And tires you can generally put off changing longer than they recommend. I can usually tell when mine need to be changed finally just by feel on a rainy day. Oil change is what you don’t want to put off too long. Ignore all the other services they’ll try to sell you, but oil change either every 3k or 6k miles is within the recommended range.
My car’s entering its second year in high school. Next year it will be old enough to get its own driver’s license. I agree with you Historiann, I’ve been looking at new cars and trying to think about what I might want to buy when I graduate, but haven’t been that impressed. The mileage is never that great, many of the cars are either too big or too boring. There’s some interesting new ones coming out right now (diesel alternatives from VW, Ford has a few new models that look promising). So maybe in the next couple years we’ll see something nice.
Western Dave on 07 Feb 2010 at 6:05 am #
Back when I was single and childless, I drove a minivan with the seats out. Great for prolonged research trips and hauling your life across country. I put the seats back in and hauled the whole graduate student gang to a conference in it. When I stopped being single, the s-o used it to carry her large scale installation art around in it. I heart mini-vans.
Tom on 07 Feb 2010 at 9:09 am #
Thirteen-year-old car, one car between the two of us (thank goodness we can walk to work), now under a foot of snow and no real plan in sight to dig it out of the plow-by piled up on the side of our street. Rose is out with the snowshoes even as we speak.
The car is sounding its age more than showing it, but the Sirius satellite radio drowns most of the rattles out. But the carbon-debt of ore-smelting or steel-melting plus the decent gas mileage makes it hard to imagine buying a new car.
We’d be sorely tempted, though, if there were a hybrid or electric Mini.
Historiann on 07 Feb 2010 at 4:03 pm #
Dr. Mister is concerned not so much that I’ll get stuck somewhere when the transmission drops out of the fartmobile, and more about having to buy another car in a hurry when we’re both busy and can’t really be bothered.
Vance & FrauTech–my sense is that smaller cars are safer, but at what price in terms of the carbon footprint? I’m considering the Honda Civic hybrid, which gets 40-45 mpg and has a 5-star crash rating. Fuel economy and safety are the most important things for me–but as you both noted, they’re rather at war with one another.
Maybe I should just get the car washed, change the oil, and buy a couple of new front tires. That will probably be a good investment in terms of both my safety and the car’s usefulness. (And maybe make it look and smell less farty?)
Digger on 07 Feb 2010 at 8:08 pm #
Car washing is important if you’re in an area with lots of salt; I had to ditch a vehicle after the bottom rotted out and things started falling off that couldn’t be replaced, because the parts they were attached to also fell off. Oy.
Adrienne in CA on 09 Feb 2010 at 12:07 am #
Just want to note that I’m suspicious of daily reporting that Toyota quality has suddenly gone from wonderful to crap overnight. Articles mention the number of complaints lodged with the NHTSA, but provide no comparisons across time periods or to similar complaints in other car makes or to percent of cars sold. In this tanking U.S. economy, there could be reasons besides consumer safety for attacking the number one foreign carmaker.
I’ll admit to being biased. Ours has been an all Toyota household for 25 years.
Penny on 10 Feb 2010 at 7:50 am #
I heart mini-vans, too, Western Dave. And it’s a never-say-never situation–if you ever have a family member who uses a wheelchair, and who is lifted or wheeled into a vehicle, suddenly a mini-van is a very, very nice option for all concerned.
Historiann on 10 Feb 2010 at 9:08 am #
I don’t like minivans, but I was mostly kidding about never being caught dead driving one, since obviously I drive a complete crapmobile! Minivans are extremely useful, and they offer much better safety and fuel economy than SUVs of the same size (or smaller, in many cases.)
I’m not anti-minivan. Just anti-minivan so long as I don’t *need* one!
esoterroriffik on 11 Feb 2010 at 12:55 pm #
One benefit of this whole Toyota fiasco is that if you hold off until next year, you can look forward to some deep discounts similar to what GM and Chrysler offered a couple years ago when they were hurting for sales. With all this negative press on Toyota, I’m sure next year’s model will not only be more meticulously put together, but offered at a lower price as a sort of deeper apology as well as a way to recoup loss revenue. Sure it’s a death trap, but the price.