Plug Me in and Turn Me Loose

 

 

Carolyn and I are about to buy a 3-year-old Nissan Leaf. It’s a fully electric car. You just plug it into the wall to recharge it, and off you go for another hundred miles or so. (In theory.)

This will work fine, since we only need it to go the gym, choir practice, grocery shopping, and get-togethers with friends within a close proximity. Any longer excursion will involve hopping into “Big Red” the RAV 4 Carolyn bought a few years back so she could sit up high and actually see the traffic around her. Prior to that, her navigation has largely involved head swiveling, teeth clenching, and what, I must say, is impeccable intuition.

I should admit, up front, that I have never cared, one way or the other, about automobiles. I’m of the “I’m at point A, get me to point B, and then back to point A” school of car selection. I realize this confession could lose me my “real man” credentials and certainly cause me to be an outcast among the guys I grew up around. I have lifelong friends who spend a lot of time and money buying, fixing, driving, and talking about cool cars of all kinds. I, on the other hand have owned a solid string of low quality, low prestige new and used beaters that I wouldn’t dream of looking under the hood of.

They range from the purple and white four-door six cylinder 55 Chevy of my high school years (an un-American Graffiti nerd-mobile of the highest order), to its successor, a 53 Desoto so heavy the pavement creaked beneath it when it rolled. This beauty was aptly nicknamed “The Sweathog.” When car dealers started misinterpreting my low-paying disc-jockey jobs as financial stability, they loaned me the money to buy a string of ugly, ill-functioning, badly engineered new cars that rarely outlived their payment plan: a Chevy Vega, a Mazda RX 3 (with the Wanker engine), a Monte Carlo I nicknamed Yvonne De, and a comically mislabeled Plymouth Reliant.

I would say, the succession of Toyotas we’ve owned since coming to the Portland Area, have, for the most part, provided pretty darn good point A to point B transportation. I was especially fond of the Prius that got me from Vancouver to the Portland waterfront and home for a dozen years or so. Along with not breaking the bank for gasoline bills, it hummed quietly along for the hour to hour and a half of gridlock I endured as I listened to audio books and cursed. I’d still be driving it if it hadn’t fallen victim to a speeding delivery van and my ill-timed attempt at a U-turn. Oops.

Along with not caring about cars, I actively hate—No, make that loathe—the car-buying process. When I ponied up for the Ford Focus that’s about to matriculate to our godson, it was the only car I test drove and I told the sales guy “Get me off this lot in an hour and you’ve sold a car.”

Carolyn, on the other hand, revels in the process. She likes to look at, ride-in, peer under the hood of, and compare the paint jobs and built-in toys on a succession of cars before turning her talents to bringing the sales guy to his knees sobbing.

She’s trying to talk me into buying the newer Nissan Leaf model with GPS, seat and steering wheel warmers, blind spot alert sensors, protective force field, and built-in rocket launchers. I, on the other had will be happy if it has four wheels and a gearshift. Oh, and a rear-view mirror would be nice. 

The final factor is price. This car costs twice as much as the house I grew up in. I realize we live in different times, but holy crap! I can hear the voice of my long-departed mother hissing, “Michael. Buy another beater. You just need to go from point A to point B.” Closer to my ear, I hear the voice of my wife saying, “We’ve got the money, treat yourself.”

So, it comes down to which of the women in my life I listen to. My mother, who, to this day, I love and respect beyond all others. Or my wife, who I love and respect, and who could do really awful things to me as I sleep.