Sunday, May 20, 2007

A New Way to Get Around


Well, we've been having this Plymouth Caravan that hasn't been of much use to us in recent months. It has a variety of mechanical maladies, including a slipping transmission and broken air conditioning . . . so I've been telling Bob, "We need to just get rid of that thing, it's not worth fixing." (Mainly because we hardly drive it - we've outlived our minivan days).

With gas prices going up, up, up and with our teenager growing increasingly independent, what we need is another driveable little "getting around" car that gets good gas mileage. Especially since I drive 22 miles to and from work each day (44 miles today round trip). So . . . we've been going car shopping lately. And you can see what we drove away with yesterday. Toyota Yaris.
Now the color, which is sort of a cross between navy and saphire may surprise those of you who know how much I DON'T like blue. Blue is the only color in the whole palette that I run, not walk away from. But here it is. It drew me immediately. I knew it was MY car. I love driving it. The handling . . the interior roomines . . . the cheap price . . . the great gas mileage. It just felt like mine.
Because of the skyrocketing gasoline price, these Yaris cars are selling so fast that they can hardly keep them in stock at our local dealership. This was the LAST stickshift transmission car that they had on the lot, and we wanted a stick. It gets 40 mpg on the highway, and I mainly drive highway.
I've always loved small cars - one of my favorites have been "Brown Bomber" - my old rusted out Toyota Corolla that ran until you could see the road beneath your feet, literally!!! It had like 218,000 miles on it.
Emily will soon inherit "Groovy Grape" my loyal and long-serving Dodge Stratus. It's been good to me and will be a good safe car for her to use while she learns to drive.
What is really funny about this is that when I got home last night, I was catching up on the many blogs I read. Guess what I discovered? My friend Kay bought the same kind of car last week in silver! This is so funny!

3 comments:

Kay said...

Yay for the Yaris! I averaged a little better than 37 mpg on my first tank, and that included some running-errands-around-town driving. Waaay better than the minivan.

Anonymous said...

It's gorgeous, Chelle! I don't have a Yaris, but my car is the same delightful shade of blue. Enjoy it, sweetie!

Laura said...

You know I'm with you on blue, but navy is an exception. It's gorgeous! 37-40 mpg? It's practical, too. The gas savings alone will make its payment. :)