Decorating for Christmas

I'm almost done.  Just a couple more small things, and then I get to sit back and enjoy it.  
As you can see, Mrs. Peel was a great help during the decorating process. Here she is admiring herself in the silver ball. Yep. Good help is hard to find.

And The Winner Is ....

After a bit of agonizing and a frantic call to my brother .... I followed my heart and bought the

MINI COOPER CLUBMAN!  

Thanks to all who encouraged me in this direction, and to those who laughed quietly at my futile efforts to resist the Mini appeal and go for something else.  I am still convinced that the Mini Cooper has some type of euphoric drug embedded in it's seats.  But that's ok with me.  Lets just hope that I can take it in and have it 'refreshed' every so often.  

I will say that the stiff competition was Toyota Matrix and the Scion xD.  I thought both were super cars, liked the way that they drove and the room inside.  And, the Toyota dealership was very nice.  No unpleasant feelings like I had at the Mazda dealership.  It was touch and go for awhile because Toyota was giving great rebates and my very practical self was screaming about saving money.   In the end, I decided that it was more important that the car make me smile when I see it.  And so....

A photo of the car will appear.  It is currently being made in Oxford, England. 

 Ta, ta, cheerio, pip, pip and all that.

Is There Life After Test Drives?

The challenge of finding the Toyota lot was met and won.  After getting directions at my hair dressers, (two women actually FOUGHT to tell me how to get to Modern Toyota!) I arrived and prepared to drive two cars!  The Toyota Matrix and the Scion xD.  

At this point I am secretely holding the Mini Cooper as the 'standard which must be met' in my heart of hearts.  A nice guy named Dan took me on test drives.  Both Toyota products were excellent.  Now, it is hard to beat a Toyota, and I'd say that the Mini and the Toyota as far as comfort and driving are running neck and neck, though they are different.  

The Scion xD is the least expensive of the two, and had more of a "spots car" ride.  But not unpleasant at all.  Loved the configuration of the interior and it had plenty of room.  The Matrix is a twin car to the Pontiac Vibe.  So I knew pretty much what to expect.  Somehow, with Toyota's usual attention to detail and customer comfort, the Matrix comes out a bit quieter on the road than the Vibe.  A very good ride, a bit more "sedan" than the xD, but still with good road feel.  

Now I am getting really stressed.

As fate would have it, I passed the Mini lot on the way back to town and went in for another drive.    On my first swing in, I had driven a Clubman (the Mini answer to a station wagon) and this time I wanted to drive the Mini.   My regular salesman, Brian was off, but "the General" took me for a drive.  And we played with the little car.  

I have begun to wonder if the seats of the Mini's might be impregnated with some sort of euphoric drug.  Otherwise, I cannot imagine why a sane woman who does not  define herself by what she drives, and who considers a car a way to get from point A to point B without walking, sits in this car and becomes  Helio Castranevs!  And that would be Helio on speed and dossed up on happy juice.  I needed to get control.  So we crunched numbers.  These are the most expensive of my choices.  Though in the horrid cost of cars today, they are only about 20% more than the lowest deal I could get on my least expensive possibility.  And it does not make me nearly as happy.  Now we deal with "what cost happiness?".  I will say that doing a roundabout at almost 70 mph was as good as an E ticket ride as Disneyland.  The bad news.  I cannot get an 8' ladder in the Mini unless I leave the hatch up.  Can it haul what I might need to haul?

More to come.

The Search for the Perfect Vee-hickle!

I've decided that a hatchback is probably the best thing for me.  It gives me cargo room for things like taking the stupid lawn mower in to be serviced, and carrying ladders, and other odd things.  Also the little sub compact hatchbacks get good mileage.  I'm looking at 29 city to 33 hwy.  So this seems the way to go.  

On my list so far to drive: Mazda3 hatchback, Toyota Matrix, Pontiac Vibe, Honda Fit, .... even though it did not rate quite as well, I'm also going to look at the Scion xD and even the Chevy Aveo.

Went over to Hwy 66, the spot in my home town where most of the heard of car lots congregate, and hit the first dealerships I came to.  The first one was the Pontiac Vibe.

There was a lot I liked about this car.  It was quite roomy and the seating was comfortable.  There was a nice amount of space in the "trunk" even with the back seats upright.  When flattened, there was tons of space.  I like the look of the car.  It had plenty of pep on the highway and the ride was OK, though not what I'd call "smooth".  Steering was good and breaks were good. Here's the downer.  The seat head rest was horrible.  It angled forward and whacked me in the back of my head, pushing my head forward into a 'turtle' position.  It was really as though they designed this for Quasimodo!  What were they thinking?   If this ends up being one of the finalists, I'll really have to see if the seat can be changed some way.  I could never actually drive like that.  Boy that was a disappointment!  Otherwise I was very impressed.  It did have  OnStar, and an extended 100k warranty on the big stuff.  I'm still wondering who sat in that seat and said, "Oh, yeah, this is comfortable!"????!!!

Right next door was a Dodge dealer, so I decided I might as well drive a PT Cruiser.  Not on my list, but I've always like the styling of it!  It is cute.  The interior has some very cute little retro touches, but the seating configuration does not have as much room as the Vibe did for hauling things.  The ride was similar, this was probably a bit smoother and a bit more quiet and the headrest did not whack me in the head!  I think the Vibe had more pickup, but this was not bad.  I was, somehow, less impressed than I expected to be.  It does have a lifetime warranty on engine and drive train.  That is very good....  So it is not out of the running, but I was expecting to love it more.  I might be able to get a good price, so I have not eliminated it, but I expected to be blown away, and I wasn't.
While there, I saw a Dodge Caliber, and said, "Let's drive it.".  It is not in the running.  Very sluggish.  Although it was comfortable and rode well.  The steering was a bit loose also.  Interior noise level was about the same as the Vibe.  It costs a bit less than the Cruiser, but the performance was simply not something I could live with.

So far, if I could stand to sit in the Vibe's seat for more than 10 mins. it would be  ahead of the pack.

After I stopped by home, I realized I was not feeling great due to the cold that was attacking me,  and decided not to go to nearby Winston-Salem, but I did drag my sniffling, sneezing self to Parks 'Chebby' to drive the Aveo... they were sold out!  Had 4 at the beginning of the week, and now they are gone.  He expects one in next week. While there, so as not to waste the trip, I drove the HHR.  Not a fan.  It is a very "closed-in" car.  Almost claustrophobic!  X-husband has one and loves it!  Go figure.  It's cute, but I did not care for the interior at all.

Car Search Part II:

  

I took Sat off because I really didn't feel that I should spread mega-germs.  It was rainy and cold and I decided that wandering car lots was not gonna happen.  Some are closed on Sun. So.... Monday I hit Silas Creek Parkway where ALL the car lots used to be .... they've moved.  But all was not lost.  I did find Honda.

 I drove  the Honda Fit.  It took curves very well.  I was impressed by it's "road hug".  The ride was pretty standard and so was the steering.  The configuration of the interior seemed to be good.  Everything about it was good, and nothing was 'wonderful'.  In all honesty, I think I liked the Pontiac Vibe better.  But I know the little Honda is rated really well.

As fate would have it, the Fit test drive took us past the Mini-Cooper lot .... soooooo when I left Honda, I hit Mini.  I thought they would probably not offer enough room, although I have always thought they were incredibly cute.  Nice kid named Brian met me and I told him up front that it wasn't on my list.  A bit pricey and probably too small.  He said "Come look, you'll be surprised"... yeah, yeah.
I SHOULD NOT HAVE LOOKED.   Terminal cuteness!  The Mini-C Clubman is the larger version ... more like a wagon, and as cute as the Mini.  This is what I really should not have done ..... I drove it.  LOVE IT!  Never expected to LOVE  a car.  LOVE IT.    Oh, dear.  Now I have to really get control of myself. 

  I'll try to drive the Toyota, the Mazda and the Scion today.   I'm also trying to get Christmas decorations up and do about 50 other things, so I'm just fitting this in. 

I will add that every single car has had the headrest issue!  It is the new safety design to prevent whiplash.  Yes.  And replace it with a hunchback.  Wonderful.  If you are a 6'3" male,or if you drive with your seat in a fully reclined position, I would imagine it hits you properly.  Isn't that good to know?

And The Next Contestant Is ... :

I located a Mazda dealer in W-S, and off I went to drive the Mazda3.  

Of all my driving adventures, this was the least successful.  And I'm afraid that my less than enthusiastic response to the dealership may have had a bit of influence on how I felt about the car.  I've tried to sort out what went wrong.  The salesman was nice as could be, but I kept getting the feeling that he didn't know as much about his car as I did.  He couldn't even find one on the lot as we walked and walked on a rather chilly day.  We finally searched one out, and he seemed to think that I was just going to look at it and say, "Oh hot doggy, I'll take it!".  When I got it through that we were, in fact, going to drive this puppy, I was forced to listen to a long, long rehearsed spiel about every inch of the car.  Most of which I had read on line already.  However.  I listened.  And listened.

At long last we drove.  The car was competent.  Nice ride, a bit slow on the pick up, handled well, but all in all, nothing special.  Just a nice competent car.  Coming back into the dealership, I was just thinking, "Get me out of here..." and he wants me to stop the car and go into the SERVICE AREA.  Do I care?  No.  I don't care if Manny is out back under a palm tree as long as he can fix my car!  I refused, he begged, he pleaded, he insisted.  But I was driving.  We did not go into the service area.  And I can say that I have crossed a car off my list.  At a 1 to 10 rating of about 7,  the poor little Mazda lost out.

Adventurers in Car Buying for a Middle-aged Woman

When the sad news was given to me, I had the usual reactions. 

 A moment of shock, followed by a deep sense of loss, and that replaced by horrifying realization that, in fact, I would have to buy a car to replace the one which my mechanic pronounced "Not worth it to fix"!

 My 1993 Chevy Cavalier, the gift of an elderly uncle who, at 94, had decided that he would no longer drive and would pass his car along to me, had reached a point where it was more to repair than the value of the car. It was not a car that I would have sought out, but it served me quite well, and was a generous and much appreciated gift.

And now I had to confront the horror of finding, and purchasing, a new "vee-hickle" as we are fond of saying in this part of the South.  Since I had no idea what I would want, or could afford, the process seemed daunting.  And so I began my search on the computer.

Introducing Bijou Juillet Diamant

Bijou is a doll.  No.  Really.  She is a ball-joint doll from a company called Soom, in Korea.  I'm introducing her, because she will probably play a large part in this blog.  Bijou has her own 'back story' and a constantly emerging personality and all this will be revealed in good time.  As I am still new to this and am stumbling into blogging, I may take a while to discover the finer points.  Here is one of my favorite photos of Bijou.  It was taken one summer evening in 1926 at her father's country home.  Bijou and her guests were going to a friend's birthday celebration which was to be a scavenger hunt.  Everyone was looking forward to an absolutely ripping evening.