New Car!

We got a new car! Well, actually Maura got a new car, but she lets me drive it sometimes. It only took us about a year and a half of agonizing research, dithering and scouting for one we liked.

For those that may not recall, here is Maura's current (now previous) car, a 2005 Subaru Forester:


It was a decent, but not great car. It required expensive gas, it was kind of an odd color, and it didn't have enough seats. The prerequisites for the new car were that it 1) seated 7 or more, 2) had a moonroof, keyless entry and tinted windows and 3) was some shade of gray. As far as I can tell, the gray part is because Maura's first car was a gray Dodge Omni. This was, apparently, the pinnacle of car technology.

We looked at a lot of cars. The obvious choice, a minivan, was eliminated early after a couple of test drives put Maura in a distinctly unhappy mood. We also looked at the Volvo V70 and CX90, Honda Pilot, Toyota Highlander, Hyundai Santa Fe, Ford Explorer and Flex, and probably some others I'm forgetting. We wound up with a 2008 Mazda CX9, which really came out of left field. I don't actually recall how it made it onto the list. Here's a picture of the one we got:


So far, we like it a lot. It's actually much fancier than we wanted, with a bunch of electronic doodads that we didn't really know it had until we drove it away (e.g., it talks to us). The important thing is that it has a bunch of seats and it's grey.

And, yes, I'm still driving my 14 year old hatchback.