January Blog A Day: #15 Transportation

My first car was a red Dodge Neon with a turbo engine and a powder blue pinstripe.  Yes, powder blue.  I do not know what possessed the previous owner to get said pinstripe, but other than that, I really liked the car.  Unfortunately, the turbo engine started falling apart during my time of owning it, and as a college student I sunk several grand into repairs while going to school full time and working part time.  So that worked out well.  I really wish I had had someone sharing financial wisdom with me when I made that first purchase.  Something like "No, don't spend $8K+ on that car, which is going to turn out to be a very expensive lemon.  Spend $2-3K on an older Honda or Toyota that is going to last forever and rarely need major repairs."

Sorry, couldn't find one with a snazzy powder blue pinstripe.

I made a much better choice with my next vehicle, a red Geo Storm, except for the fact that it didn't have any air conditioning.  Somehow I bought it without knowing this.  It was 1992, I just figured that all new cars had air conditioning, because why wouldn't they?  You may wonder how I bought it without knowing that it didn't have a/c.  Here's the gist of it: it was early spring in San Diego, and it had controls for the fan that made it feel a lot like a/c at that time of year.  I missed asking that question, and they never brought it up - which, to me, it certainly seems like they should have.  That's a fairly big thing to have missing from a new car.  But still, that was a great car: really reliable, fun to drive, great mileage and I liked how it looked, too.  It fit me well.

See, isn't that a snazzy little car?

Until I moved to eastern Oregon, a very rural part of the state with cold winters, very hot summers and dirt roads in some areas.  I knew my little Geo Storm wasn't going to cut it, so sadly, I traded it in and instead bought a big white extended-cab pickup truck, a Ford F150.  I liked being up higher and it was good to have the room to carry both passengers and cargo.  But it had this weird "unnnnnhhhhh" kind of noise that would happen intermittently when the air conditioning was going.  It made me nervous the whole time I owned it that something major was about to break down.

The Behemoth.  It was big.

I lasted less than a year in eastern Oregon before moving over to Salem, and since I didn't need the truck any more and didn't want to keep driving it if I could help it, I found a great deal on a white Hyundai Elantra, and I could not ditch that truck any faster.  I loved my Elantra.  It felt roomy inside for a smallish sedan, it had a HUGE trunk, the engine felt like it had good zip, it rarely needed repairs and it never sounded like "unnnnnnhhhhh."  The only downside of the car was that it had manual door locks and windows.  Other than that, I loved it.

Another snappy car

I had the Elantra for about 6 years and probably would have kept it longer, but we were sitting in it one day while I was a few months' pregnant with Rachel and our giant dog (we had a Great Dane/Golden Retriever mix for a few years) was in the back seat, and I realized there was nowhere for a baby if we had to take the dog to the vet or anywhere else.  It became clear that the car wasn't going to accommodate our growing family and our dog, plus we thought that having power doors and windows would be nice to have with a baby in the picture.  Mostly it was that we were outgrowing the car, though.

This was the other car that I was sad to see go.  But I'd had my eye on the Hyundai Santa Fe for my next vehicle, whenever that was going to happen, so I was excited to be getting that as a replacement.  We bought one in a metallic root beer-kind of color.  It had power everything, pretty much, a moon roof (which I hadn't had in a while), a 6-CD changer (I know, but this was in 2004 before everybody had MP3 players or in-car systems) and some other bells and whistles that were nice to have.  We bought it via a website program that saved us several thousand dollars, too, which was a great bonus.  The only problem was that we had to drive down to Long Beach to pick it up after it arrived on the freighter that was shipping it, and when we got there, we discovered a couple of shallow but long scratches on the door.  Instead of leaving it there and letting them fix the paint job before we drove away, we took it home first.  It took several weeks and 2 trips to drop it off because the guy who was supposed to take care of it flaked on being there the first time.  We got a tiny rental car to use as a replacement when we did drop it off, but we learned our lesson about taking a car off the lot if isn't already in the condition promised.

Not my actual vehicle, but looks just like it

This has been a great vehicle for us.  I wish the backseat was just a little roomier, since only a tiny person fits in the center back seat with Rachel's booster and Ben's carseat back there.  But it's been a great vehicle, good mileage, comfortable, lots of conveniences and few big repairs.  The warranty was great, and thankfully we haven't had too much major to take of post-warranty.  I've had the Santa Fe for almost 9 years now, and I'm hoping to get at least 2 or 3 more years out of it before we replace it.  This is another one that I will be sad to see go.

And that wraps up my history in personal transportation.