We have gone through a slew of cars in the past ten years, but my favorite one has to be our kids’ bright red 1995 Honda Civic with only 22,000 miles on it. 

My husband’s uncle generously passed the car onto our daughter in 2005 for her sixteenth birthday.  Uncle Don was already elderly when he purchased the Civic brand new, but felt he needed a little something to tootle around town and take his grandsons out to dinner once a week. Our daughter also used the Civic just to tootle to high school and do stuff locally, as our son does now.  Consequently, the Civic has continued to rack up very few miles, but is still in tip-top shape. 

But let me tell you why I really love this car:

The windows crank down exactly as far as you want them to on the first try. The radio has two knobs – one that turns it on/off & adjusts the volume; the other knob changes stations. To turn on the heat, you slide the button along the red line indicating how hot you want it. And you get fresh air by turning off the heat – wow, what a concept!  The back seat is deep and wide with seatbelts tucked deep into the gap, so one can stretch out comfortably and take a nap if need be. Sound familiar?

My husband and I currently own 2 RECALLED TOYOTAS. Yep, two of them. On both cars, the dashboard lights up like a 737 cockpit. To change anything one must do so via “the panel” with a hundred options. Every time I turn on the radio or heat, I practically veer into oncoming traffic just trying to locate the correct screen, let alone actually adjust anything.  The windows and car locks have minds of their own.  And I still have no idea where the horn is. I could go on, but you get the point.

Both of our Toyotas have had a couple weird quirks since we bought them, which now turn out to be “life-threatening symptoms.”  But to me, the real problem has nothing to do with Toyota specifically – it has to do with complicating a perfectly lovely, simple machine that got one from Point A to Point B without digital capabilities way too distracting for the average human brain. As soon as they started computerizing cars, I knew we were doomed.  Mark my words: this Toyota recall is just the tip of the high-tech iceberg… which we all know is melting due largely to auto emissions.

But that’s a whole other blog.