I can’t have pets in the loaner car, nor can my wife drive it (if I had only remembered to bring her license when I got the loaner...), so I started up the longboi for the first time in... weeks... and drove 100 miles to visit my parents with doggo. It was a joy to drive a manual again, even if it’s slow as hell and about as safe as ducking under a desk during a nuclear war.
Later, I ran some errands in the loaner. I discovered I had automatic high beams. Basically, if it detects no oncoming traffic or vehicles in front of me, they come on (wow, no shit). Golly: all these modern conveniences for things that were never problems in the first place, but hey. Comfy ride. Quiet as a child whispering a desperate prayer that mommy and daddy would stop fighting. It’s a nice car... but not “I’m willing to pay for it” nice.
I am now entertaining three extremes:
- 1) “Maybe I don’t even need the Paseo... I can sell it, pay off some debt, and just drive the longbed everywhere for a while.” [I can feel my wife’s psychic scream... she’s always worried about me dying in a car accident because I drive so much]
- 2) “Man this loaner sure is nice, but it’s not for me... I should test-drive a Corolla XSE hatchback — or maybe a GSW or Alltrack!”
- 3) “I’m gonna sell everything and then kill myself trying to find a clean, low-miles loaded T100 for under 1 billion dollars* (*USD).”
Just give me my broken tape deck back, man...