Last month my Honda Civic Hybrid died and after 10 years, it was time to buy a new car. Having moved to a part-time job, I was no longer in the same “bracket” for buying. I had hoped the next time I bought a car there would be affordable electrics available, but no such luck.
I looked at subcompacts, with fond memories of the first car I bought, a 1993 Geo Metro that got 50 mpg. I challenge you to find a gasoline-powered car available in the United States today that gets 50 mpg. Most hybrids don’t even get that.
I ended up, after my research, only seriously considering two cars: the Chevy Sonic and the Honda Fit. It was a difficult choice, as there are cool things about the Fit and I’m generally sold on the Honda brand. But I felt burned by my experience with Honda as my censor, then battery failed, and was disapointed the hybrid system only lasted 119K miles before needing a total of $4K in repairs. And then my sales experience with Honda was not good. They offered me less in a trade-in (on my Honda!) than Chevy and were just riding on their reputation.
The Sonic is cool. It’s not like me– it’s orange-red and has gadgets and a display screen. It has turbo and is a 6-speed manual. And in the end, I learned that it is the only car in its class that is built in the United States, in a new factory near Flint, Michigan. So I bought American.
And then, last week, i got a flier in the mail from my dealership, Schwieters in Cold Spring. It said I could come in with the attached coupon and pick up my free turkey! So I jumped on the back roads and went to Cold Spring.
The dealership was doing a brisk turkey business. They had pallets of frozen turkeys. A woman was behind a table using her paper cutter to clip the coupons from the fliers and then handing people turkeys.
You gotta love America.
I guess I can stop collecting those stamps from the grocery store, cause I got my free turkey! And with any luck, as long as I remain a customer of Schwieters, there will be many more.