Although I haven’t been particularly active in the community lately, starring this and that (is it just me or has LaLD massively upped their game in the article department lately?), I’ve been checking up on our site. Mostly the reason for my absence has been this:
That’s my wife’s car, hit while parked on the street by a 1983 Chevy Suburban driven by an 82 year old driver. Somehow this guy accelerated from a stop (he was also parked) only 10 or 12 feet away and managed to entirely total our car. I was the only one home at the time and just heard the....well, crunch. I honestly could not find any damage to his 3 ton truck when we were trading insurance information, but our 2001 Camry was clearly totaled. In fact, pieces of it were still falling off on Friday when a tow truck finally got around to picking it up. Seriously, my wife tripped over a piece of Styrofoam from the bumper that morning on her way to work. When the tow truck driver finally arrived I had to actually hand him parts that had fallen off. Clearly this was not our fault as there had been NO ONE IN THE CAR at the time it was hit, yet when the 82 year old talked to his insurance he claimed it was just a fender bender.
“Fender bender”
Regardless, every car enthusiast knows what happens when one car is destroyed.....New car buying time! You may have guessed by driving a 2001 Camry that we are not swimming in cash. Owning a Kinja blog pays well, but not that well*.
Since most of us got here via Jalopnik and/or Oppositelock (massive shoutout to the guys who found us via Instagram, too!) I may have slightly, um, strong feelings about cars. We really only test drove two makes: Mazda and VW. While I found the new Mazda3 a bit of a let down, the VW dealer accidentally thought we were there to drive the new 3 door Golf with a manual transmission. Let me tell you......that car is FRACKING AWESOME! Even though our family size is 3 (plus a temperamental dog) I would have put all my money on that one. Immediately. Without hesitating. I haven’t had that much fun driving since I owned an e90 BMW with the sport package and a 6MT. In fact I believe there is a gif that sums up my enthusiasm for this particular car:
Seriously, those of you without kids should stop everything now and go grab a base Golf....unless of course you can get into a GTI
Sadly, my wife (whose car it was that got annihilated) has a bit of an issue with manual transmissions (as in she will never, ever own one) and the 5 door Golf we had actually gone to the dealership to test drive was equipped with what we found to be a terrible 2.5L 5 cylinder connected to an auto. Despite my pleas that a 3 door would be ok, we (well, I) was forced to walk away. Note: I had to climb into the backseat in our 3 door Honda Accord at my son’s age. Kids can do it....
Why couldn’t it have an extra set of doors?!?
In any case, there was an even more looming threat: my wife had decided her favorite model was the Mazda CX-5. I don’t understand “crossovers”. Not even a little bit. You want to sit up high for what reason again? So you can feel less stable cornering? So you can get worse gas mileage? So you can vaguely look like your vehicle would be able to transverse a road with some mud on it?
I don’t know. And although yes, there is a manual option on the CX-5, good luck finding one. I may have also stated my better half’s desire to own anything BUT a 3 pedal car too.....
To be honest, the CX-5 is not bad. Even the one we settled on with the 2.0L engine and an auto was ok. Certainly way better than any CR-V I’ve had to drive. Sadly, after going over numbers again and again, my wife had to come to the conclusion that we just were not willing to stretch to make those payments. Which brings me to the diecast part of this article...
Tomica’s 1/61 Mazda Axela Sport sitting in front of....
Our new car! Well, yes it is used, but for us it’s new. 2011 Mazda3 (aka Axela) 2.5L hatchback. It’s pretty great. Just look at it smiling! Now just to return our horrible rental car (an Altima) and all will be right with the world. And time to start saving for that VW...unless a new Mazdaspeed3 comes out. :)
*Of course no one here actually makes anything off the blog, which makes it all the more impressive how great the articles have been lately. If you are interested in authorship on LaLD please let me know in the comments!