Out With the Old, In With the New

Yesterday was a historic day for our family, particularly Bryan and I. We had been anticipating this day for a while, and hope that this new “era” fills our hopes and needs. Aw, I’m not talking about the handoff of the American Presidency—I’m talking about vehicles!

Bryan has been driving an old Honda Accord for years—it has easily paid for itself in gas mileage and ran like a champ. After 300,000 miles, it finally started having some trouble. And sometime yesterday during the wee morning hours, it finally passed on. Bryan found it stone cold—wouldn’t so much as turn over. We knew it was coming—we just didn’t know exactly when. So rather than sinking more money into life support for a dead vehicle (or purchasing matching Obama tattoos), we decided to invest in a new vehicle. Introducing our new 2009 Volkswagen Jetta Turbo-diesel:

What’s that, you say? We have gone with a girly, non-American, non-gas-guzzling, non-powerful vehicle? While we have been known to love our high-octane, high-horsepower sports cars, our beat-up redneck trucks and our giant gas-guzzling American SUVs, we also know that we will never own a real gas-guzzling, super-high-horsepower Ferarri without making some sensible choices in our lives (or without winning the lottery or taking out a wealthy relative). We have done our research, and this little turbo-diesel gets better gas mileage than a Prius while producing 236 ft-lbs of torque (meaning the car will get up and GO when the gas pedal is pushed--it's been rated against a BMW 850i!) Now who’s girly?

Yeah, Bryan looks kinda funny in the driver’s seat of this thing (it is his car). But he’ll be the one laughing all the way to the bank this summer when gas prices skyrocket again. And we will own our Ferarri one day…