Woo Hoo! It's mine, precioussss....

[herveus]

Saturday, the salesman from Honda of Bowie called me to say that the car should be in Real Soon Now (having arrived in Baltimore) and that the next call from him would be to tell me that the car was in.

I got that call today.

I have a brand new Honda Civic Hybrid. They call it "Galaxy Gray". I'm not sure what I call it yet, but I do call it "mine".

It drew quite a bit of attention on the lot today, but everyone else who thought they might have a crack at it were trumped by the deposit I put down several weeks ago.

Now we have two cars that are Not The Van...and Matthew is making progress on putting his car in working order.

Comments

[montuos]

Coolness...

[ealdthryth.livejournal.com]

Cool!

[herrulrich.livejournal.com]

Cool Congrats.

[sue-n-julia.livejournal.com]

Let us all know how it works out. Juliana and I are considering getting one in a year or so.

S

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

w00t!

Galaxy Gray is the same color as nostasia and blaisedec's Civic, methinks.

[herveus.livejournal.com]

This is the second Civic Hybrid we've owned. The 2005 one lasted just over a year and 30,000 miles. It's demise had absolutely nothing to do with the car and everything to do with a failure to look both ways before crossing another road, leading to a close encounter with a full-sized van (Verizon truck). The passenger seat was half its normal width when all was said and done, but MJ walked away from it with nothing worse than 25 stitches in the ear. I think I shared more poop on that in an earlier LJ post...

I'll also note that Consumer Reports found that the two most reliable models from the 2005 year were the Prius and the Civic Hybrid. The only downside was having to wait three weeks for the next one to arrive on a boat from Japan and get to the dealer; supply and demand favor the dealers right now.

[fosveny.livejournal.com]

I guess you like it, then? Katya and I have been considering getting a hybrid, especially since we lost the green Saturn.

[nostasia.livejournal.com]

Why, yes, yes it is. And by the way, herveus? No fair! You can't have a car that looks exactly like ours! ;-D

Seriously, congratulations!

[herveus.livejournal.com]

Well, my choices were to snag this one or wait an undetermined amount of time for the *next* hybrid to come in. I went for "gratification less delayed".

*plplplpl*

[herveus.livejournal.com]

I was very happy with the 2005 Hybrid; the 2006 seems to have improved on that in ways I am still discovering.

For example, the 2005 would automatically stop the engine when you came to a stop (or nearly so), but once you took your foot off the brake (causing the engine to restart), you had to get up to about 10 MPH before the autostop would engage. Now, it will stop when you stop after a short pause, even if you didn't get above 2-3 MPH (as in nasty slow traffic and the like).

The amenities are refined. The radio is XM ready, and there is an AUX input jack so you can plug your alternate audio source directly in. There are controls on the steering wheel for the audio system as well so you don't always have to take a hand off the wheel to adjust things.

The driver's seat has an "up and down" adjuster doohickey.

I'd rather have gotten a Toyota Prius for the better mileage and somewhat greater geeky tech factor, but, for me, the driver's seat was a killer. ...as in it made my back hurt in a short test drive. The Civic didn't do that, so the choice turned out to be really "hybrid" or "not hybrid". Your mileage may vary. Also, the Prius is a slightly larger car ("mid size"?!).

On the other hand, there is room in the Civic to put a ten foot piece of copper tubing in by folding the rear seat back down and sticking the pipe into the passenger seat foot space.

...so, yeah, I like it.