When a company car gets to a certain age or the odometer clocks a large number of miles, the car gets traded in for a fresh one.
My lovely green Honda Civic was three years old and I managed to put well over 80,000 miles on it, so yesterday men came to the house VERY early (06:45) to deliver the new company car.
Much to the dismay of a young child living in the house who cares much more about cars than I do, the new car wasn't the new Honda Civic. I chose a Vauxhall Vectra. In the US it would be an Opel.I'm really not a "car person" but the new car is comfortable. I like it and it is nice to drive a nice new car. I don't have car conversations with people. When a group of salespeople clump together one of the topics of conversation is invariably the what-are-you-driving conversation. I can't discuss engine sizes or what extras are on the car because I never notice. I do know that my new car has cruise control in it somewhere because the delivery dude told me, but I haven't found the button for it just yet. My eyes glaze over during car conversations and I usually find an excuse to go to the bar at that point. Maybe its a guy thing.
Well, anyway, my new car showed up very early yesterday morning. I was still in my jammies when the delivery guys showed up. I hadn't emptied the old car that needed to be taken away. So, I made the delivery guys a cup of coffee for them to sip while I set about emptying my car of all its stuff. Its amazing how much crud can get packed into a car in two years. Parking disks, windscreen washer fluid concentrate, all my promotional material boxes, the dog's traveling water dish and the bottle of water. In the console between the driver's seat and the front passenger seat, there was a stack of collected business cards from other sales reps, half a bag of mints, hair clips, parking receipts and flosspicks.
By some strange coincidence, Henry got a new car yesterday too. Well, not NEW but new to him. He got a nice four year old BMW sedan. Its the nicest car he's ever had. I haven't had a drive of it yet, perhaps later on today. We decided that Henry's car was getting too old and as last week we had a morning where it didn't start, it was time to change it. We've had it for nine years. The maintenance on the old one (a Peugeot 306) hasn't been too burdensome but we saw that in the near future expensive things were going to start to go and it was time to get something more reliable before the winter hit.
Both the new cars are dark blue and have diesel engines. If maintained, should work quite well for a number of years.
6 comments:
Well congratulations on the new car(s).
Wow...that is a lot of milage to put on a car in three years. I think the most for me was probably about 60,000 in three years.
Happy motoring and enjoy your new vehicle. :)
There's somethng about getting a new car that just feels so good. It gives you a fresh start feeling. We spend so much time in cars...it's important that we enjoy them and all their nifty little "extras" that come with them. I'd love to get a new car...maybe someday. Congrats!
Congratulations!
What's a parking disc?
Thanks Alan, Joy and Joe.
In Carlisle and Dumfries there are parking areas along streets where you can only park for short periods of time e.g. 1.5 hours. You get a parking disk from the city council which is essentially a cardboard wheel with a clock printed on it. When parking, you set the cardboard wheel so that a little arrow points to your time of arrival. The parking facist can then tell how long you've had your car parked in that spot and give you your parking ticket if you've gone a minute over the time allowed.
That parking disk idea is kinda neato. I like your car-talk, is very European. Here you would make a big deal out of a diesel car, and BMWs are not mentioned lightly, and I've never even heard of several of the other cars you mentioned. Maybe that's partly because I'm also not much of a car person.
We are big fans of the Honda Civic though. We will be replacing our car soon and would like to replace it with a Honda Civic, but they get stolen a lot around here so maybe not. I think a lot of other people like Honda Civics too.
You can't beat a diesel car, they make good taxis you know
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