New Car

Nonfiction Monday will be on Tuesday, again. I forgot to bring my chosen NF book home. And I was busy, busy at work today. Too busy to work on the book review.

So, here's a little slice of life. (autobiography? nonfiction?)
I just bought a car.
My wonderful Saturn SL sedan was getting wonky, so I decided to get another, ignoring the fact that Saturn is made by GM and GM isn't the best auto maker out there these days.

I loved the plastic side-panels on my old car.
I bought a Saturn VUE, despite the fact that I discovered that Saturn hasn't put plastic side panels on their cars for several years. This is going to disappoint many people. Those plastic side-panels were a great selling point.

The Saturn VUE is a small SUV. If you can imagine any SUV being small. It's smaller than the Dodge Caravan we used to own and even feels smaller than my old Saturn Sedan as I drive it around.

My daughter asked if we got the VUE hybrid because it's supposed to be the most fuel efficient of all hybrids. If the Saturn Vue is the most fuel efficient out there, they aren't advertising it that way. Their brochure says it gets the same gas mileage as the regular cars -- or else I would have gone for the hybrid, instead. Oh well.

It drives the same and feels about the same size as a sedan -- except for being a bit tippy on curves. I've learned to automatically take curves and turns much slower. There are tipping warnings on the sunvisor, too, so it looks as if they're aware of this. The older VUEs look a little larger and wider and a bit sturdier.

I also found it strange that they sold me one right off the lot instead of making me wait for one to be built. And then I saw an article about how the car factories are turning them out faster than they are being sold. I can remember when we went shopping for a new car and had to wait months until it could be made and delivered.

There was a verbal guarantee that parts would be available for the next 15 years, but I haven't found it in any of the contracts, yet. (I haven't read every word of the contracts, yet.) Who knows what will happen if/ when they go out of business.

There even is a car phone. (can you imagine?) my husband tried to call me on it yesterday, but he couldn't hear me talking. It seems to have no adjustment controls to compensate for my soft voice, so I don't know what to do about that.

This is my first time with OnStar.

The 9-year-old is thrilled that we have the Disney channel on the radio. So what channel has she been wanting to listen to the past few days? 106.5 MIX -- the same channel she gets on her radio in her room. I have it set for only one X-channel (Disney) and the other 5 are local channels. Weird thing is -- my usual morning talk show that has lots of traffic control stuff doesn't work well around at my workplace. Another channel overlaps it. As far as I can tell, it's either a military channel from the nearby Aberdeen/ Edgewood base or something from right across the Chesapeake Bay. (The library is really close to the bay.) And it's neat being able to control the radio from the steering wheel.

For several days I was driving around, thinking I was arriving early for everything. Then my husband pointed out that the digital clock was WRONG. Darn. We're still adjusting things to make it comfortable. The 9-year-old highly approves of the back seat.
-wendieO