There is certainly something special when you are handed over the keys to a car that is so new that there are only 34 miles clocked on the odometer. This has only happened to me once in my life (so far) and I’d like to share some thoughts with my friends and readers of this blog. First off, I did not buy a new car…. even though my current automobile is 12 years old and certainly has its’ quirks – I cannot afford a new car at this time in my life. My name was simply picked out of a hat during a recent meeting of bloggers at Southeast Toyota Distributors which happens to be based only a few miles away from where I work and live. The drawing was supposed to be for a one-week test drive of a Toyota Minivan. I kindly requested that it be changed to a Camry since my kids are now teens and I don’t need the space offered by a Minivan for a stroller, car seats and car-pooling kids around town.
I figured that I would get a 4 Cylinder Camry which would get me from venue to venue over the weekend as I visited live bands and some Karaoke bars and save me some money on fuel. Instead, I was given a 6 cylinder souped up SE model with 16 inch low profile tires, combination leather and cloth seats, and every imaginable gadget inside. Every time I hit the gas, I was going 50 miles per hour in about 4 seconds – so much for trying to be economical with my lead foot!
My favorite gadget was the radio which had a large LCD display that let me select between AM-FM, HD-Radio, Satellite or if I somehow ran out of stations with all of the above, I could hook up my smart phone and access either stored songs via Bluetooth or use the internet connection to play Pandora or almost anything else! The only sad part was that I could not find a proper spot to hold my phone and the only cables I found in the glove compartment for charging were for iPhones. Lucky for me, I always carry a spare USB cable and my Android can run 24 hours without being recharged anyway.
Having a scratch-free car for a week made me feel proud whenever and wherever I parked it – although somewhat fearing parking too close to some other cars. The car’s finish was so sparkling new that I hosed it off with clean water every day. I was afraid to scrub the dirt off for fear of leaving anything permanent behind. It was especially fun backing out of parking spots and seeing what looked like a tennis court diagram replace the radio screen which doubled as a rear-view camera screen. It took me a while to figure out which line on that “tennis court” would indicate that I was about to hit a curb.
As with everything in life these days, all good things must eventually come to an end. This one lasted one week before I had to return it. I feel like I broke it in somehow – the car will never be the same since I added 300 more miles to that odometer and to tell you the truth, neither will I!