Car Debate

Last weekend we were in the suburbs of Dallas with a few hours to kill while waiting to meet some friends for a dinner and movie. With not enough time to warrant a trip back home, only to leave shortly thereafter, we decided...what the heck...lets go to a dealership and look at cars.

Now normally this is not something that would just pop into either one of our heads as something that is an enjoyable way to kill 2-3 hours, but you have to understand two factors that currently change this equation:

1) There's really not that much one can do in Dallas for a few hours that doesn't include eating, or buying things at a mall (i.e. no forest preserves to go for a leisurely stroll)

2) Chris' car is now reaching the ripe age of 18, and according to some, may reach "classic" status at the ripe age of 20. While once a beacon for obsessive washing, waxing, and the like, the 1990 3 series has recently seen its share of mini disasters...starting with the infamous 2006 tornado that came through Iowa City and decided to pummel Chris' hood with softball-size hail, and more recently with some careless parking by Chris that resulted in some "minor" crumpling of the right quarter panel on a parking cement support beam.

So are we ready to write off Chris' first car? The car that got him through 3 years of undergrad, 4 years of dental school, and now a year of post-grad residency? The car that forced him to learn stick (by some a requirement to be a man). The car that got him so many women (actually just Emily...she couldn't resist it)...well, we'd like to think not. But the reality is that gas prices don't seem to be abating any time in the near future, and while the car has been running masterfully down in the warm Dallas climate, there is the all-to-likely chance that the car won't react kindly to a return to the harsh midwest winter. If that weren't enough, the car unfortunately sucks up only 91 grade premium fuel, now at $3.99 in Dallas, and likely higher in Chicago and Iowa City.

So all of this has gotten us to thinking that it might not be a bad idea to start thinking about the prospect of adding a new member to our family...a car that is. But what car to purchase you ask? We have been completely satisfied with Emily's '04 Corolla thus far, it offers a nice ride, pretty darn good gas mileage (as high as the upper 30's on the highway), and has plenty of room for what we need. This all begs the question...do we be completely boring and buy another Carolla, or do we spend the extra 5G's and get a more fuel-efficient, perhaps less stylish Prius?

This is what drove us (no pun intended) to the local Plano Toyota dealership. 10 milliseconds upon pulling into the lot we had a salesman at our windshield offering to help us. So we told him we wanted to take a look and test drive the '09 Corolla and the '09 Prius. Thinking that a large dealership like this one (it's one of the largest Toyota dealerships in DFW) would certainly have a Prius in stock, we were shocked to hear that the last one on the lot had just been sold within the last hour, and that we would be unable to test drive it as it was being prepped for its new owners. Hmmm...there must be something to this hybrid thing...according to the salesperson, they've been selling like hot cakes lately. We were about to ask if we were still in Texas, because we couldn't believe that hybrids and Texas and sold out could possibly occur in the same continuous sentance...but indeed it did. So we ended up driving the '09 Corolla, which essentially felt just like Emily's Corolla, plus the new car scent...and for good reason, not much has been added or changed since '04, except exterior styling and a power stearing mechanism that is fluid-free.

So here's what we'd like to hear from our readers...some of whom hopefully know more about cars than we do...should it become necessary to replace Chris' car in the near future (a sad day for all), should we go with a Corolla and save 5G's, or spend the 5G's and save the environment and buy the Prius?

Any and all comments are welcomed...

(vs)

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