Linkstew

While I was waiting for my car to be serviced at Sangera Subaru on Friday, I walked down to Toyota to see if they had a new Prius, and there one was. I eagerly approached the first salesman I could see (Before he even had a chance to approach me! Ha, that'll show 'em!) and asked to test drive it. And it's a really nice car.

The seats are really comfortable, and are made of a kind of weird faux-suede. There's a lot of room in the cabin, with a lot of nooks and crannies to put things. The split hatchback window was a little weird when I first looked in the rear view mirror, but once I was driving I didn't even notice it.

Some of the conventions about where things are in a car are so changed in the Prius that I was disoriented even after all the countless pictures I'd looked at. The digital speedometer was way up by where the huge windshield meets the dash, and yet it's large numbers were very easy to read. The other digital displays near the speedometer were just as easy to read. The shifter is very strange, and is basically just a little lever that you push to select either R, D, N, or "B" (not sure what that was), and after you select one the lever pops back to center. The steering wheel of the car was covered with controls that I didn't really play with very much, other than adjusting the cabin temperature and feeling the immediate change in the AC levels.

When I pulled onto the freeway, I found myself going 70 without feeling any real rev of the engine. It just did its CVT thing and suddenly I was going 70, no trouble. It turned very nicely too, and the drive was very smooth on that normally very bumpy section of 99.

Once I was driving, the navigation system turned on, and it started telling me how to get back to the Toyota dealer. I was not at all expecting the thing to speak the directions to me, but speak it did. I'm not sure I would use the voice navigation feature, but watching the map with the little icon representing my car moving around was really really neat. It felt more like a real life video game than anything else I've ever experienced.

And of course the center console computer had a lot of options that I barely scratched the surface of, but the neatest one I found was that you can enter in logs of when you have all of your servicing done (tires rotated, oil changed, etc), and then the car will apparently tell you when some maintenance is scheduled to be done.

Basically, if I were only using my car for commuting, or driving home to visit Bakersfield, I would have been crazy not to get this car. But every time I pay my car bill (the Prius I would have gotten would have been $5000 more than my Subaru), and every time I go snowboarding, I'll remind myself I made the right choice for now. If I'm just patient, I'm sure we'll see Prius-like technologies showing up in many other cars in the not-too-distant future, so hopefully I'll get to enjoy such luxuries (because that's really what they are) in my next car. Which I really shouldn't be thinking about yet, because jesus, I only got my car a month ago.

Hm, I think I need to remember to make a conscious effort to bypass the whole 18-month computer cycle that's pretty much hard-wired into my head when I'm thinking about cars.

Le sigh.

I called up Hayward Toyota last week and placed an order for a 2004 Prius. At the time, I was certain that that was what I wanted, and that it'd be worth waiting for. But since then, my certainty has wavered a little. It's a good thing my deposit is fully refundable.

I first began to waffle when I had to select which option package I wanted while I was placing the order, and I began to realize just how much money a new car actually costs. I only started my job three months ago, and I don't exactly have a lot of spare cash saved up at the moment, and I still have a bit of debt here and there. Getting a Prius will be a serious commitment over the course of years.

My uncertainty grew when the dealer emailed me and told me that there was a lot of demand for the car, and that I might get the car ... maybe by January? It's only been two months, and the BART+CalTrain routine is already getting pretty old. Waiting until January is going to be killer, because the weather is bound to take a turn for the worse soon, making the outdoor portions of my morning commute much less pleasant.

And things weren't helped when a friend of mine started trying to convince me to buy a "little commuter car" that gets nearly as good-gas mileage (cough yeah right cough) -- "like an Echo."

Not that I'd buy an Echo, but I did start wondering if I should just give up on waiting and buy a used car now. It'd be extremely convenient to have a car as soon as possible, and a used car would be cost effective, allowing me to actually save money instead of spending a more significant chunk of my check on car payments. I'd also probably be able to pay a used car off pretty quickly, freeing me from that commitment.

But tonight, I got a ride home in a co-worker's new Honda Civic Hybrid, and that ride both bolstered my will to at least wait for the Prius, and confirmed my suspicion that the Civic Hybrid is a fairly bare bones vehicle compared to the comparably priced geek's dream 2004 Prius.

So, I'll still keep an eye out for used cars, in case some super deal crosses my path that would hold me over until I can get a Prius (though if I were going to do that, I really wish I would have just done that this summer, instead of messing with BART+CalTrain for the last two months). Once my Prius is available, I'll go drive it and decide if it's actually worth all the money. And in the meantime, the extra wait just means I'll be able to save up more money for a down payment.

10,000 U.S. buyers want Toyota's '04 Prius

Oy, boo on demand. For better or for worse, I ordered a Prius yesterday from Hayward Toyota. Hopefully I'll get it before my birthday.