Test drive report

I test-drove three cars yesterday: the Jetta diesel wagon and the '10 Outback and Forester.

The Jetta was RED! and SHINY! and RED! When you step on the gas, nothing happens, and then VROOM! In fact, I found myself saying "vroom" each time it picked up speed. Very nice car in many ways. There are two things that bugged me, one of which is a deal-breaker for the lovely red diesel. The moonroof is covered only by a sort of perforated scrim thing, so even with the roof shade closed, sun still comes in. I am very sensitive to glare – I drive with my sun visors down at night to avoid glare from streetlights – and on a sunny day that was really bugging me. It is possible to get a moonroof-free TDI, so that's not an absolute deal-breaker, but the cars that are actually available have the roof. The more serious issue is that the driver's seat, while pretty comfortable as is, lacks a certain mode of adjustment, the height-and-angle adjustment, that I really rely on in my current car. I can tell that the seating position in the Jetta would be a serious comfort issue in the long haul. (I have both back and knee problems, so I am getting even more picky about finding interior ergonomics that suit me perfectly, and on long drives I find I am much happier if I can make constant slight adjustments on the fly with the power seat controls.) But if you don't have the particular seat and moonroof neuroses I do, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend trying out the Jetta. Gorgeous car.

The Outback was extremely cushy. The driver's seat was like a cloud-upholstered throne. Land of lumbar happiness. The CVT transmission is, indeed, very smooth. There's lots and lots of interior room. The view out the windshield is great; the seating position is high in relation to the car, which I like. Inside, I felt like I was in bank-vault isolation from the outside: very safe, very quiet, slightly hard to see what was happening in any direction but front. The Outback would be seriously in the running except that the one color I really like, the Sky Blue (a sort of periwinkle) isn't available in the trim I want anywhere closer than about 2000 miles away. And yes, color matters to me. I've compromised on color on my last two cars (Subarus, not surprisingly), and this time, when Subaru finally has a color I like, I'm not going to spend close to 30k on a car and know that that periwinkle color was out there and I couldn't get it.

The Forester may just be the Goldilocks car. It's definitely placed between the Outback and Impreza in cushiness: you can get leather and a power seat, but it's more spartan inside, sans cloudlike throne feeling. Since I pretty much treat my car as a rolling kennel and junk storage room, that's ok. Two especially great things about the Forester: because it has an almost-square back, it has vast usable cargo room. With the seats down, you could probably carry home an armoire if you wanted to. The visibility is amazing. It's like riding in a very safely reinforced glass box. Clear views all around, and since it's about 10" shorter than the Outback and the rear hatch window is pretty much where the read bumper is, it should be easier to park in the city than the bigger car. And, contrary to reports, it's not underpowered. It goes ZOOMP! away from a stop, which accords better with the way I drive in city traffic than does the wait-then-vroom effect of the diesel Jetta. So I think it's the Forester. I'm going to sleep on it one more night and then put down a deposit. The dealer can get me one from not far away in a nice mid-blue color, with the added benefit that it's a Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle, for what that's worth. Here are a couple of pics, of the blueness and of the Ikea-ready cargo room:

Comments

[Sisyphus]

Red! Shiny! Shiny! Red! Yay!

Oh wait, _not_ the red car? :(

So this blue in the picture is _not_ the periwinkle blue? It's still a nice blue. But, if you like that car, you can order it and have it delivered if you're willing to wait --- when my car died (long ago) they only had one color in the new one I wanted, but I could have gotten any other color I wanted if I waited for them to order it. But I went with the silly color and immediate delivery instead.

Yay! Virtual car shopping is fun! (I'm still hoping someone I know gets a Mini. Hasn't happened yet though.)

[Thoroughly Educated]

Sis - My college roommate just commented on FB that she wishes I had gone for the mini. Apparently her mom just got a mini! She has a very cool mom. My mom is also cool, but her knees don't bend enough to get down into a mini.

And update: yes, I got the blue, and it is a very nice blue, though the periwinkle is a smidge more on the lavender side than this blue. I'd call this one a French blue, if I had to pick a name. (Actually, it is pretty much the blue of the blue Prius, for comparison.) Time is too short for special-ordering, because in just about a month I'm leaving here and heading north of the border for a year, and I need to get the car while I'm here in the land of my driver's license so I can get tags and everything before I go a-wandering. But in any case, after sleeping on it, I decided I'd rather have this car - smaller overall footprint, much better visibility, and better configuration of the same amount of cargo space, compared to the one that comes in periwinkle. Oh, and the Forester is several $k cheaper than the Outback in the trim I wanted, and on top of that I got a GREAT deal by playing one dealer off another - very unlike me - and ended up paying even less than Edmunds said I should aim to pay.

So maybe my NEXT car will be shiny!red!, when I'm old enough to have a real midlife crisis, instead of this premature one. Oh, wait...by the time I'm ready for the next car after this, I should be within about 5 years of retirement. D'oh.

[Thoroughly Educated]

I should add what I didn't post before about why I accelerated the car-decision-making time last week from enthusiastic shopping to actual negotiating. My old car, an '02 Outback, could certainly go another few dozen thousand miles, but I woke up one day last week realizing that 1) I had gotten myself well into the new-car headspace; 2) if I needed to replace the car after I left for my out-of-country fellowship term I'd be in for a colossal hassle of cross-border car shopping; 3) I could do a major mitzvah by giving my old car to my young cousin who is carless in a rural area (a bad state to be in) and too saddled with student loans to afford car payments. I have benefitted for much of my adult life from hand-me-down family cars (and from being free of student loans) and this is an easy way for me to pass on that good fortune. It makes me very happy to think that the trusty old green Outback is going to a good home - a Subie-loving, spaniel-owning home, too. My cousin and aunt will fly out here the week after Thanksgiving to have a brief visit and pick up the car from me before I pack up the new car to head off for the next phase of the year.