A New Car

After months of research and consideration, Dylan and I sold our old Jetta and bought a new car last Sunday. The old car was ten years old (120k miles) and though reasonably reliable, it was starting to have some problems pop up now and then. With the "baby years" here, we realized that it was time to upgrade to something with a little more space, and something that would not require any expensive maintenance for at least a few (hopefully five or more!) years.

We kept our options for a new car completely open at first and went from mini-van to SUV to station wagon, finally deciding that we would like the smallest car we could reasonably get away with. Everyone says you need lots of extra space with kids, and that is definitely true, but at the same time, we strongly feel that you can make your life as big as that space you have available. Plus our parents did great with small cars (sedans for the Vaughn family and small wagons for the Graham family) in the 80's and we seemed to fit ok, even with all that soccer gear.

After a few weeks of test driving small station wagons, we zeroed in on the Jetta SportWagen, delighting in the fact that they offer a diesel version (named Green Car of the Year) that gets 40-45 mpg on the freeway. We even get a government tax credit for purchasing this vehicle! We thought we had the car purchase all figured out after driving the automatic version, but then we spent a weekend at Lake Tahoe driving our friend Kevin's stick shift Mazda 3. I learned to drive on a stick shift back in the mid-90's and drove one for the first five years of my driving career. After my ten plus year hiatus, I have to say that I'm in love if it's at all possible to be in love with a style of driving. We were sold (literally!) after the test drive, and purchased the car the next day. The Bird Rock roundabouts that used to be a back and forth of gas / brake / gas / brake, are now a delightful dance between second and third gear, no brakes involved. And navigating traffic on the freeway, more of a fun game and less of a grind. After five days of car ownership, involving lots of driving (three round trips downtown, lots of driving around town and a trip to Target), we have not even used 1/4 of a tank of diesel fuel.

We love our new car!