High Hopes

For a car to work as my daily driver, it needs to do well in two situations:

My commute to work
The auto tour at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge

I’m in the midst of a long vacation so I (thankfully) haven’t had the chance to test our new Crosstrek on the work commute, but Christmas was lining up to be my first chance to test it at Ridgefield. It’s become a bit of a tradition for me to go to Ridgefield first thing on Christmas morning as sometimes I practically have the refuge to myself, a nice time for quiet contemplation during a hectic time of the year.

Late on Christmas Eve after my wife had gone to bed I went out into the garage and just looked at the car for a while. I was nervous, for the next day would prove whether my high hopes for this car would pan out at the refuge. I sat in it for a while and read the owner’s manual enough until I figured out how to quiet the beeps when you lock the car. My nerves settled, I headed up to bed and set my alarm to wake me before sunrise.

I love photographing in the rain and Christmas delivered the wet in abundance as I drove in the dark to the refuge, giving me a quick feel for how the little Subaru would handle the heavy rain compared to its bigger sibling (thankfully, it handled the soaked streets and big puddles quite well, I was thankful not to be in the Civic).

I was relieved to see the car did well along the auto tour too (the icing on the cake would have been if it had been a hybrid so I could drive more quietly around the refuge, but it was not to be). At this time of year you can’t get out of the car except in the parking lots, so I took a quick picture beside the sign in the entrance lot.

I’m definitely still in the honeymoon phase but so far I’m just loving this little car.

I’ve been back to the refuge and it’s gravel road a few times since Christmas, each time in the rain, and it’s starting to feel less and less like someone else’s car and more and more like mine. But she’s not quite as white as she used to be.

The Wait Is (Actually) Over

It’s going to be a white Christmas this year! A white Crosstrek Christmas!

The dealer called late this afternoon to say our car had arrived and thankfully they were able to squeeze us in so we could pick her up right away. This is going to be the best Christmas ever!

Will I be too excited to sleep tonight? I never could as a kid. We lived in Michigan in my younger years and one Christmas Eve with relatives in my room I ended up in the bottom bunk of my brother’s bed. Unable to sleep I contented myself with watching the snow fall outside his window. Suddenly there was a big gust of wind and snow as the bottom of Santa’s sleigh flew past, and just as quickly it was gone.

The over-active imagination of a kid who loved Christmas? I know what I saw! Even today in my memory I see his sleigh flying by.

Technically speaking the Crosstrek isn’t a Christmas present. And besides, as much as I love the car, Sam and Emma were far better presents. But yes I am excited, and yes I have a lot to be thankful for.

So too do Sam and Em, for I put up our artificial Christmas tree this afternoon. They were both sleeping under it before I even had time to spread out the branches and I don’t think they’ve left it in the hours since. Woodland cats, these two. Emma even tried to climb it while I was setting it up, but we know how that turns out.

The Wait Is (Almost) Over

We started looking for a new car about a year ago, and ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner!

Our list of potential new cars had shrunk to one, the Subaru XV Crosstrek, and pretty soon we’ll have one of our very own. They’ve been in short supply and high demand since they arrived on our shores a few months back, but our dealer emailed me yesterday that a black one just came in so we went down today for a test drive. We loved the car and while we’re not interested in black, fortunately a white one is due to arrive in one to three weeks so we put a claim in on it. I’m not normally a fan of white but I think the XV looks great in it.

We’ve decided to replace the Civic first even though it has less miles than the Outback, it’s been a great little car but it just doesn’t fit our current lifestyle very well. So for the first time in over twenty years a Civic won’t be my daily driver. And the first time I won’t have a stick shift, which I’ll miss at times but not so much on my current commute with it’s heavier dose of stop-and-go traffic, and not at all at Ridgefield where the stick was downright obnoxious at the slow speeds I drive on the auto tour.

I’ll certainly miss the moonroof but not the several inches of headroom it robbed me of.

Not there will be any tears shed when it comes time to hand over the keys, these next one to three weeks can’t pass quickly enough!

Visibility

As a fan of small cars, I’ve been thinking my next one should be in a bright color to make it more visible to other drivers, like the metallic red on the Chevy Sonic or the orange on the upcoming Subaru Crosstrek (although as much as it pains me to say it, perhaps it is too orange). But when I look at my tight animal close-ups and see my car reflected in the eye, I wonder if these brighter colors would also be more visible in the picture?

For some reason car reviews don’t touch on this sort of thing.

Not that I’ll lose any sleep over it since it could be fixed in post if necessary, plus for the most part I do prefer calmer colors like a nice sky blue or maroon or green or — oh wait, am I talking about cars again?

The List

I suppose I should mention that, after all the car talk, I’ve decided to wait until at least the fall before replacing either our Civic or our Outback, and maybe not even then. But I did want to have a list of potential candidates in mind in case something bad happened to either car and we had to replace them on short notice.

Replacing the Subaru isn’t so challenging as there are only a handful of cars I would consider, with another Outback at the top of the list. Choosing a replacement for the Civic isn’t so easy since there are so many potential candidates. So I created a mental list of all the cars that have interested me, divided up into four tiers with my favorites at the top, cars that I think I could buy almost sight unseen and be happy with, moving down to cars I like but don’t think I would buy.

The list has been fluid, with my head shoving cars down the list and my heart shoving them back up, but it has started to coalesce. When the time comes, a few test drives should sort things out for good, but here’s where we are for now:

The Favorites

Chevrolet Sonic
Subaru Impreza

The Challengers

Honda Fit Sport
Lexus CT 200h
Mazda 3
Toyota Prius c

The Longshots

Chevrolet Volt
Ford Focus
Honda CR-Z
Toyota Prius Plug-in
Volkswagen Golf TDI
Volvo C30

The Probably Nots

Ferrari 458 Italia
Hyundai Veloster
Scion iQ

There are a few vehicles coming out this fall that should shake up the list. The Subaru Crosstrek (shown at the top of the post) is the most intriguing, as it is the only car that could replace either the Civic or the Outback. Both the Subaru and Hyundai have been on sale for a while in Europe, while I think the Fords have been on sale there in regular form but not as hybrids.

The Up-and-Comers

Ford C-MAX Energi
Ford C-MAX Hybrid
Hyundai Elantra GT
Subaru XV Crosstrek

If the Crosstrek were available today, it’d probably be in our driveway, but we’ll see how the competition stacks up in the fall. And I promise that’s enough car talk for a while.