Wednesday, July 2, 2008

unidentified driving object

So I took two cars out for a test drive last night - the Honda Civic Hybrid and the Toyota Prius, and apparently, cars are now turning into spaceships. I have only ever really driven a '97 Toyota Camry, and it's a car. I don't know if the trend now is towards making everyone feel like a Jetson, or if it's just the hybrids that feel like that, but I definitely felt like an alien as I drove the Civic Hybrid and the Prius. Not in a good or bad way. It was just different from what I expect when I get behind the wheel of a car.

I liked both of them, but the Prius has a three-month waiting list! It's cheaper, more fuel efficient, more versatile, with more space in the back, but that's only once you get it. So now I'm having a bit of a dilemma. Which spaceship should I drive?

In related news, I finally got my California driver license - in the end, I only had to take a written test (much to my relief, since I never learned how to parallel park, and would surely have failed for that alone). I've moved out of temp housing into more permanent accommodations. And my first two paychecks landed safely in my bank account. So bit by bit, I am becoming a bona fide resident of California, which basically makes me an alien, right?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You'd have lucked out anyway, since California no longer requires parallel parking (if it did, there'd be 50% fewer 16-year olds on the street!).

I vote for the Civic! I've driven three different generations of Hondas and Acuras, while my parents have driven even more Toyotas, and everyone prefers the feel of the Hondas over the Toyotas (all else equal).

Xanga Viv

Unknown said...

For the other side, we absolutely love our Prius. Most people I know who favored the Civic did so because it has more power and "better handling", which I take to mean that you can drive it faster and more recklessly down the freeway. Not my style. Also the power is at the expense of mpg.

We routinely get 50mpg and the Prius has a fantastically tight turning radius, which makes it easier to parallel park.

If you do a little shopping around and are not as picky about color, you can usually get a Prius faster than the established waiting list time. Don't know quite what it's like now, but when we bought 3 years ago, they told us "3 months" and we got it in 2 weeks.

Anonymous said...

I must say this blog is pretty funny. :)
Good luck with your car and best to you and fiver on the West Coast.