Saying Goodbye To Your Car – Buying A New One

I’ve been thinking about this idea of saying goodbye to your car for a while and when I just read this post about selling a Volvo and buying a new Prius, I thought I’d share my thoughts also.

I traded in my 2001 Saab 9-3 SE last month on a shiny new electric car: A Chevy Volt. More on the Volt later.

I found the process of deciding on a new car and going through the purchase process much more difficult now than I did 8 years ago. Part of the reason was that the Saab was the first car that I ever owned that I really loved. And part of the reason was that there are no cars on the market that did what the Saab did as well as it did them for the price.

I know that Saabs are not known as popular cars. They’re quirky and sometimes unreliable but for the quirky girl that I am, my car was perfect. Here’s why:

• In a time when oil & gas were cheap the 9-3 had an average of 25 mpg (28 hwy) and carried 4 people easily with plenty of room for luggage/stuff in the trunk.
• In a time when big engines were becoming more popular for more power, the Saab had a small 2 liter engine with a powerful turbo that engaged with a sport button. Giving you lots of power on demand without sacrificing fuel efficiency.
• It was an elegantly designed car. The interior was both sporty and had burl-wood on the dashboard, a great balance to have.
• And most of all, those clever Swedish engineers allowed the back seats to fold down, and sloped the back window all the way to the bumper to add a hatch. This made the car as effective as a station wagon at hauling things, and I made use of it!  So many sedans have a back window design that could accommodate this, and yet they don’t design hatches on them. So frustrating.

There were negatives to the car too. The SAAB did break down in really weird ways and at the end had an unknown unsolvable electrical problem that drove me to the brink of screaming-anger when it would leave me stranded for 30-60 minutes while doing errands.  It was like flipping a coin on whether the car would start if it was still warm from driving, and it kept getting more frequent. And my brother kept saying my car was “Borked”, like the SAAB company. Heckling never helps even when it includes Muppet references. The rust on the fenders and bottoms of the doors was just annoying.

I really struggled to find a car I liked for a long time. The used car market where I usually look was decimated by the cash for clunkers program and a lot of natural disasters leading to smashed cars. Also cars 3-5 years old didn’t have great fuel efficiency. I was left with only new cars as choices for the first time in my life. I needed something innovative and revolutionary to talk me out of my attachment to the SAAB.

I considered the Buick Regal since it has a turbo charged GS version, although at the time I was looking, it was not available. It is an attractive car, similar gas mileage as what I had and in the right price range. I unfortunately found the local Buick dealer was inexcusably rude and the car felt small and the interior wasn’t very elegant. It would have been an OK choice, but it didn’t feel like something I would love for 10 years.

I considered buying one of the new old stock SAABs shipped over from Sweden on a suggestion from my brother. Someone bought the one I was considering in Chicago while I was trying to transfer funds to buy it. I worked through a deal with a dealer in another state to buy and ship a beautiful chestnut brown one, but couldn’t sign the papers when I read how excluded everything was from the 3rd party warranty and how SAAB/GM held no responsibility for this quirky 9-5 at a pretty high price and no MPG gains over the old one.

I briefly considered a suggestion from a dealer of an Infinity sedan because Consumer Reports really likes their quality and the cars are elegant. But the gas mileage sucked.

Soooo… I came back to the car I had been watching develop for a long time. The Volt.

I was initially very excited about the car when it was a concept.

Then when I saw the real deal, I was not impressed. It looked cheap and somewhat Delorean back to the future-ish.

Then I saw the price. Woah, no way.

Then we heard about the government rebates and sat in a Volt a year later at the auto show. (the first year you couldn’t get close enough to see them). The car was more elegant on the inside than the outside. And it was a practical 5 door.

So we went back and payed more than the car should really be priced at, for the size and looks of it, but we admitted we were paying for the technology development and the novelty of it being new and not so much for the car itself.

Am I happy with the Chevy Volt? Yes, it does impress me in different ways than the SAAB did. I don’t spew emissions when I’m driving most of the time now and its a lot faster than people think. I still spend most of my time driving in the left lane and I think its important for people to see an electric car in the left lane passing them. This car is very quick, capable and fun to drive. (sporty) Sure, I sacrifice some battery life driving that way, but I’m still way ahead of the efficiency I had before.

What are the drawbacks other than the price? The trunk is really small. The radio doesn’t have that DVR rewind feature that the Buicks have. It costs more than most luxury cars it doesn’t look like one, and it has the same brand badge as a really cheap Sonic.

Brand aside, the Volt is the best car for us for the next 5-10 years. As gas prices continue to rise and my job will be moving from 25 miles away to 50 miles away I needed a fuel efficient car that I would still be able to put a baby seat in and have the capability to answer the phone wirelessly with Bluetooth. And its a revolutionary technology platform for a car. I like things that are different when they’re really better and I think this car really works.

My husband likes it a lot too but I think we may need a larger vehicle for kid related stuff so we need GM to make a larger version of the Volt before we buy another one. And he isn’t really ready to say goodbye to his blue 1998 Acura Integra GSR either. He may possibly be more attached to his car than I was to mine.

Fighting Morning Sickness All Day Long

Being pregnant is exciting for about the first 2 weeks you know until your body decides that everything you like to eat is completely unacceptable.

Morning sickness doesn’t affect everyone, but I have more issues with it than I anticipated and wanted to share some strategies I’ve used to avoid using a prescription anti-nausea medication. I’m looking forward to a time where pregnancy is more fun and morning sickness & nausea are not as prominent.

First off its important to remind people that morning sickness doesn’t just strike in the morning. I’ve had nausea just about any time my stomach is empty. It wakes me up in the middle of the night. Hangs around all day at work and is back about 1 hour after eating. I’m lucky in that I haven’t been tossing up anything, but the constant nausea is draining to someone who is already tired because of my system trying to adapt to a lot of changes right now.

My tastes have changed too. In the first 2-6 weeks of pregnancy I could not get enough of steak and protein based foods. Veggies were yummy. No issues with dairy or anything else.

Week 7 things changed.(this week) The occasional passing feeling of nausea was now consistent all day and night every day for 4 days before I realized I really did have morning sickness all the time and it was time to try changing what I was eating.

I wasn’t aware that you could affect morning sickness by changing diet because I usually don’t have a sensitive stomach to any foods. I guess its just common sense right? I started looking for those things you eat when you have the stomach flu and this is what I’ve been living on:

• Ginger Ale Soda (seriously the best thing ever, it works!)
• Bread & peanut butter
• Organic mini crackers & cheese
• Bagel & cream cheese
• Whole foods beignets
• Baked Potato
• Apple Pie
• Animal Crackers

Its a short list of bland food, but I’m just so happy to feel normal again that it seems like the best food in the world. I know its the taste palette of a 7 year old kid, but its where my stomach has reverted to at the moment.

It is just so surprising to go get a veggie stir fry or eat a steak & veg dinner and feel totally horrible afterwards. It just didn’t compute at first because my stomach has never done this before.

I was worried about getting adequate nutrition during this early development time but I take huge prenatal vitamins so my hope is that they will cover any deficits in my diet while I live on starch alone for a few weeks to avoid constant nausea during early pregnancy.

I’ve read that morning sickness is only a factor in the first trimester for most women, so my hope is that by week 12 I will be able to go back to eating hummus & veggies, Greek yogurt and Sweet Tomatoes salads.