New Car Chronicles
Today marks two weeks in as an Audi owner. I owe you faithful readers of this series some thoughts. The honeymoon is not over; I still love, love, love my Q5. It is pretty much everything I was looking for in a replacement for my Big Chevys.[1] Nimble, quick, comfortable. It has just enough sportiness to make it fun while remaining just big enough to have use as a family utility vehicle. All five of us rode in it to C’s graduation Wednesday and there were no complaints from the girls as they sat three across in the backseat. It…
Car Shopping Chronicles, Part 7
If you’ve read my blog entries over the years, you know I can often be a little wordy with the background before I get to my point. I believe context is important and want to fully inform my readers. However, sometimes it is best to cut to the chase. So… Yep, I am now the proud lessee of a 2021 Audi Q5. It’s pretty fucking sweet. We picked it up Thursday, so it is still early days. I’m pretty sure I’m totally in love with it. I’ve also been listening to Zooropa a lot.[1] For today’s entry I suppose I…
Car Shopping Chronicles, Part 6
When I began this process last fall, Audi was at the top of my list. It didn’t matter which Audi. The Q3 if I went with a subcompact. The Q5 if I went compact. The Q7 if I wanted to blow out the budget. Once upon a time, say in the early ‘00s, Audis were my ultimate car, specifically a well-appointed S4. For years I’ve loved the looks of the Q series. We have friends who currently have three Audis in their family and zero complaints. A sister-in-law stored her A4 in our garage when she went overseas 15 or…
Car Shopping Chronicles, Part 5
I have no set order or reasoning to how I am scheduling my test drives. I guess some of it is stock dependent: if a dealer does not have the car I’m interested in on their lot, I’m not going to drive something else just for grins. In general, though, I head to whatever dealership my car muse sends me to. Last week I randomly picked my local Acura dealer – right across the street from the Mercedes dealer! – to test drive the most interesting vehicle in my search: the RDX. I say the RDX is most interesting because…
Car Shopping Chronicles, Part 4
We’ve made it! After three entries of background bullshit about my search for a new car, we’ve finally arrived at my first test drive! As previously noted, I am focusing on the luxury compact SUV class. While there are a ton of cars in this space, I have pretty much whittled it down to five I want to compare first hand: Acura RDX Audi Q5 BMW X3 Mercedes GLC300 Volvo XC60 Very imaginative names, no? I assure you that I’ve never gotten any of them confused or jumbled up. Each of these gets very good reviews, always showing up at…
Car Shopping Chronicles, Part 3
Crap. I realized in part two of this series, I left out one angle of my car search. It’s not terribly important to the big picture, but I figure if I’m writing about the process, and some of you are actually reading about it, I shouldn’t skip anything that happened along the way. At the end of my last entry, I revealed that I had settled on a specific category of cars to focus on: luxury compact SUVs. While that is true, that was not my first choice. Initially, seeking to go waaaaay smaller than my current ride and save…
Car Shopping Chronicles, Part 2
This is the second entry in my collection of observations as I search for a new car. In part one I listed every car I’ve owned. You can read it here. Today, I’m going to set up some parameters for my next purchase. If you look through that list of past cars, a trend is obvious: the last four were all selected based on the needs of our family. That’s not meant to be a complaint: two of those were pretty awesome rides that we were able to justify by saying “We need a big ass car to haul all…
Car Shopping Chronicles, Part 1
Welcome to a new series here on Ye Olde Blog. It will focus on my process to pick my next vehicle. I know, exciting, right?!?! Feel free to skip if you’d rather read my normal bullshit about sports, music, and books. For about five months I’ve been spending A TON of time researching what I should get when the lease on my Chevy Tahoe expires in July. As you may recall we did a little car shopping in November, but that ended up being for S rather than me. Which is a good thing; she would have hated driving the…
In The Market
Yesterday we got our updated car insurance policy, listing M as an insured driver. The addition to our premium was a nice way to start the holiday season. She’s been hassling us about a car for weeks. I believe I already shared that CHS only gives parking passes to sophomores if there are exceptional reasons that require one. She’s told us several times that we need to come up with something and send the email. We just give her a blank look and then suggest she assist us rather than give us orders. She and one of her St P’s…
Car Troubles
We had an interesting Monday when it came to interactions with automobiles, both indirectly and directly. Things started with a bit of a bang. Just before we were heading out of the house to do school drop offs C yelled to us, “There’s a car on fire outside!” I ran to our front door and, sure enough, on the main road our house sits near, about 100 yards from our front door, a car was sitting, hood open, with flames pouring out of the engine block area. I yelled up to S and then got on the phone to 911.…