Recently in Cars Category

This is for anyone who's ever struggled to parallel park, as if we needed yet another reason to feel inadequate.

I realize that picking apart the logic of any television ad is like taking candy from a fish in a barrel, but GMC's recent "I Vow" series touting its Sierra pickup line seems to push the envelope for damning with faint praise. Here's my cogent analysis of what the commercial says vs. what it really means. (Don't thank me for these revelations; this is just what I do.)

One of the challenges of owning a bicycle with a wheelbase of more than 9' is transporting it. Conventional bike racks just don't work.

I don't know what possessed someone to do an in-depth comparison of the new Ram 3500 Heavy Duty pickup with a Delta IV Heavy rocket...but I like it!

When we bought our new truck in July (has it been that long ago?) I didn't get an extended warranty, but I did spring for a prepaid "oil changes for life" plan. And I'm beginning to realize one of the downsides of failing to keep up with automotive technology.

When I did the mental calculation on the payout for the prepaid plan, I used my standard "every 3,000 miles" schedule, and I figured I'd easily come out ahead, even factoring in the time value of money. What I failed to realize is that today's cars (at least in the Wonderful World of Honda) no longer require oil changes as frequently as the 11-year old Durango I was replacing. And, in fact (I'm sure most of you already know this), you -- the driver and owner -- have no active role in the decision regarding when the oil needs to be changed; the computer will let you know when it's time, thank you very much.

So I now find that the Ridgeline has just under 4,000 miles and the computer is telling me that we're still at 60% of oil life, and I'm beginning to realize that I've paid approximately $70 each for oil change over the estimated 100,000 miles I'll probably rack up before buying another car. Another brilliant financial decision.

On the other hand, maybe I'll get lucky and the truck will exhibit one or more of these characteristics and I'll get more frequent changes.

Our recent purchase of a new vehicle represented a rare event in our lives. In our almost-40 years of marriage, we've owned relatively few cars. We tend to keep cars for a long time (if not for high mileage; our commutes have generally been short to non-existent).

Anyway, I made a deal to sell the Durango - the car that is being replaced by the new Honda - and the disposal of that 11 year old vehicle brought to mind the relatively short list of the other cars we've owned. I'm sure you're dying to know more, so here goes.

• 1972 Chevy Malibu - Did I mention that I had to get married in order to get a car? Debbie brought this red coupe with a snazzy white vinyl top with her, and we drove it through college and into the early '80s. It was a lightning rod for collisions (not our fault), and we were poor enough that we always used the insurance money for more important things (like food and rent) and so it was the most beat up of any of our cars when we finally donated it to an unknown person at the behest of our church's benevolence ministry.
  
  
• 1977 Olds Cutlass - This was our first new car purchase, and our first "grown-up" car. It was loaded, and I can still remember the salesman warning us about the expense as we went through the checklist of options we wanted added to the vehicle. Little did he realize that we were large-living DINKs (and our family income probably totaled all of $20K at that time, but, still...). We kept this one until 1985, when it became the only car we ever traded in for a new one (and we'll never do another trade-in, by the way).
  
  
• 1981 VW Sirocco - This was the closest I'll ever get to having a sports car, although this admittedly wasn't very close. But it did have five-on-the-floor and Recaro bucket seats. My most vivid memories were of the way it reliably died during the slightest street flooding in Midland (and at that time in the city's history, a heavy dew could cause such flooding), and how I successfully hotwired it after losing my keys in the lake one afternoon while windsurfing. We gave this car to family members in the early '90s.
  
  
• 1985 Chevy Suburban - This was the workhorse of our stable. We actually ordered three of these at the same time, one for us, one for my parents, and one for Debbie's parents (no, we didn't pay for all of them). We hauled more gear to more places with this big honkin' V8 gas guzzler. On one trip we had a full set of scuba gear, two windsurfboards, and a tandem bicycle. This was the last car we owned to have a carburetor, a weak link that stranded us twenty miles north of Roswell one summer. I'd like to blame aliens, but the real villains were working in the shop where the car was towed, diagnosed with a bad (and expensive to replace) fuel pump, and then sent us on our way, limping back to Midland only to learn that we needed a carb rebuild. We sold the Suburban in the mid-90s.
  
  
• 1993 Chrysler Concorde - We began a string of Mopar purchases with this green sedan, which was the most expensive car we'd owned. It was well-appointed and had a surprisingly powerful motor...and a surprisingly harsh ride. It was quite reliable and required no significant repairs, until we gave it to Debbie's parents in the early 00s, at which time everything started breaking. However, Debbie's dad is still driving it, so it's got something going for it.
  
  
• 1995 Plymouth Neon - We may be the only people in the world to have owned a Neon that wasn't made by Dodge, and I'm still not sure how we ended up with a Plymouth. Of course, the two models were identical except for the logos. We had the dealership add power locks to this basic run-errands-around-town car (I think we took it out on the highway exactly once), and they came with a funky security system wherein the doors locked automatically within about ten seconds, whether the keys were out of the ignition or not. And if you didn't override the system just right, you had to put up with all the interior lights flashing for an interminable period, which made for some freaky nighttime errands. We gave this car to family members in the mid-00s.
  
  
• 1999 Dodge Durango - We're now in the Modern Era, sort of. The Durango proved to be the most reliable and versatile vehicle we owned to that point. It got pretty good gas mileage, had very few mechanical eccentricities (aside from occasionally having to pop the hood and jiggle some wires to get it started), and it, too, did more than its share of hauling stuff for us. I've had up to fifty bags of cypress mulch crammed into the interior and strapped to the hitch-mounted cargo carrier. And, of course, we're now in the process of selling it.
  
  
• 2005 Hyundai Santa Fe - This is Debbie's current car, a little SUV that has a great combination of reliability, versatility, and economy. The only problem we've had with it thus far is a stuck disc in the CD player, and who listens to CDs anymore, anyway? I've transferred the XM radio from the Durango to the Santa Fe, which solves her music listening issues. She's putting about 6,000 miles per year on this car, so I expect it to be around a while.
  
  
• 2010 Honda Ridgeline - This, of course, brings us up-to-date with the family car history (I intentionally left out the motorcycles, by the way...and the bicycles). As you would expect, the new pickup was more expensive than any of its predecessors - it didn't cost much less than our first house - but it's got all the bells and whistles that any urban cowboyish sort of tinhorn might want. It's a keeper.

So there you have it: just nine cars in 37 years. I actually know people who have owned that many cars in three years.

Here's a final interesting (well, to me) thread that runs through this vehicular history: every one of these cars was either red or gray, in some shade or another, except for the Concorde, which was a nice dark green. I'm sure that's a sign of our schizophrenia; we're either screaming for attention or trying to fade into the background.

I'm referring not to facial blemishes but to the comic strip, which is one of my favorites due to its  ability to unerringly portray the foibles and habits of teenagers. And, apparently, me.

See, we've got this new car - a Honda Ridgeline, if you must know. It's loaded with toys - navigation package, XM radio, 115 volt auxiliary power outlet, and Honda's HandsFreeLink, a Bluetooth-based system for using your cellphone and the car's GPS without actually touching those devices. Those are all really cool things, but the owner's manual is almost 400 pages, and the configuration of the technology is not always intuitive.

So, I sat in the car in the garage for more than an hour yesterday, pairing my phone to the car's system, and [making attempts at] importing my contact list into said system. At one point, my wife felt it necessary to come into the garage and observe that I reminded her of Jeremy from the aforementioned cartoon, when he and his friend took possession of an ancient, non-running VW bus and, lacking funds and skill to make it go, contented themselves with just sitting in it. I couldn't really argue with the comparison, given the less than stellar success I was having making this hands-free thing go.

I did eventually get my phonebook imported, sort of. If your first name begins with "A" through "P" and you're in my contact list, then I can call you via the car's system, but for some reason, you who are in the dread "Q-Z" category didn't make the import. I'm really sorry, but you probably won't be getting a call from me anytime soon, at least not while I'm sitting in my garage, since I still haven't figured out how to do anything with the whole shooting match while actually driving down the road.

Baby steps. Or, at best, teen-aged steps.