#95: Here In My Car (Part 2)
We Lose All Control - But For Good Reasons
From 1983 to 2005, I (and after 1999, my wife and I) owned a financially respectable 7 cars.
If you enjoy math (which I do not), that works out to one car apiece every 6.28 years (I think). Not awesome from a long-term savings perspective, but none were leased and some were bought used. It could be worse.
It was in 2006, however, that – like with Odysseus – the gods began to conspire to ruin our ride.
Those mild initial winters after moving to Colorado in 1998, which convinced us that a minivan and an old, small sedan would suffice, changed significantly in 2006.
That December, it snowed every weekend (and some in January) in amounts so daunting that, at one point, we could not get out of our neighborhood. The record-setting snowstorms on two of those weekends are known collectively as The Holiday Blizzards.
I tried to get out, to go to work. The Corolla promptly high-centered in the street at the bottom of our sloped driveway, requiring assistance from neighbors to push it back out of the road. I didn’t bother with the van, fearing an even worse predicament.
The city snowplows skipped our little cul-de-sac, stopping at the neighborhood park that separated our court from the rest of the development. The snow kept coming, then hardened in overnight freezes.
Our neighbors across the street could only get out by driving their big SUV up and over the curb, through the park (where somehow the accumulated snow gave way more easily) and then back to the road where it had been plowed.
I, meanwhile, trudged through snow and ice each day to the end of our court, crossed a field and met a coworker who picked me up in a parking lot. I did this for almost a week.
It was at that point we decided we could no longer tempt fate without a vehicle able to blast through snow.
2007 Subaru Outback (new)
Enter the 2007 Subaru Outback. Subaru is legendary for its surefootedness in snow, and we hoped our first Subi would allow us to navigate the suddenly more harsh Colorado winters.
We even had the front windows custom tinted after purchase, to a degree that we soon realized was so questionably dark we couldn’t see much of anything at night. Lesson learned.
Unfortunately, we also learned that the back seat of the 2007 Outback was oddly tight, while the rear cargo area was cavernous. That mattered because we had two small children in car seats. I could not slide the driver’s seat back far enough to drive comfortably when one of our kids was behind me.
Meanwhile, my wife soured on the Outback when she drove it to a local ski area with our kids. When they returned after a long day on the slopes, the Subi wouldn’t start. She was told it had something to do with the altitude, which she thought was silly given the car was sold in Colorado.
She has disliked Subaru ever since. Even today, almost 20 years later.
So once again, we were back in the car market, looking for a vehicle we felt could handle the show as well as our family’s needs. We had the old Corolla and the minivan, but our weakness was winter capability.
What followed was an auto odyssey (there, I did it again) that rivaled the excess of medieval French kings. However, no sooner would we buy a vehicle than we would realize it contained a tragic flaw.
The Parade of Cars (Abridged)
There was the used, silver 2006 Toyota Highlander, the only vehicle we bought from a stereotypical used car lot (slightly disconcerting, but it was a Toyota, so little risk, right?). The Highlander had cloth seats, and a few weeks after we bought it we began to sniff out the faint (and growing stronger) smell of cigarette smoke. It was boring, and smelled, and we traded it in.
There was the new 2009 Honda CR-V, a car (also silver) that I felt was the ideal combination of snow capability, space and reliability.
We enjoyed it for almost two years. When my father-in-law passed suddenly in 2010, my mother-in-law needed a car because theirs was coming off lease. So we sold her the CR-V, leaving us looking again (and unwittingly contributing to the CR-V’s growing reputation as the official vehicle of 50+-year-old women).
Next up was a 2010 Honda Pilot (new and yes, silver, though initially it was going to be a model that was a sort of reddish color that our young son nixed because he asked if it was purple), which was extremely capable but, in the end, just too big and required too much gas. It was soon after this time that I became convinced that gas prices would soon be untenable, and having a giant SUV didn’t bode well (or so I thought).
Plus it was a pain in tight parking lots.
I indulged my years-long desire for a fun Jeep Wrangler in 2012, buying a basic (manual windows and all), 2012 maroon 2-door Wrangler (new) with minor hail damage (a common thing in Colorado).
That vehicle could, indeed, be fun. I put a hoist in the garage to lift off the Wrangler’s hard top and let it float above us, ready when needed. It was the only car we had ever bought where we would all get in and go for a ride just to be in the (topless) car.
The problem with a Wrangler was, it was like driving a brick. If there were any sort of wind (especially on nearby Highway 93) the Jeep would be pushed sideways with so much force that you would have to hold the steering wheel at almost a quarter turn just to go straight.
Even with no wind the ride was rough, and because it featured a heavy hard top you had to leave at home, good luck if you were caught on the road in a rainstorm.
It also was the only vehicle we owned that, when it snowed two inches or so (which happened often), the Jeep would slide backward down our inclined driveway into the street as you frantically pressed and held the brake. The Wrangler weighed nothing.
Finally, a year or so after we bought it, Jeep issued a safety recall for a transmission fuel leak, an air bag explosion risk and I believe something to do with a cylinder problem. The problem was, they never had the parts to fix it.
So for 15 months I was bombarded by “Safety Recall – Contact Dealer Immediately!” mailings from Jeep, only to call our dealer and be told there were no parts. Be careful out there!
One happy Wrangler memory: It was the vehicle we drove up Lookout Mountain to meet, for the first time, a black lab we hoped to adopt. I was so taken by her that I said yes and we loaded her into the Jeep immediately, shocking my kids, who had been dealing with a dad ultra paranoid about them making a mess in the car.
We named the adopted dog Sydney. She was awesome.
In 2014, we replaced the Jeep with the brand new Subaru Crosstrek. My wife grumbled, but it seemed to be a great snow car. That year, we drove the blue crossover all around Colorado on a family vacation, and it did great.
I remember at one hotel in Breckenridge, the parking attendants excitedly asked us about it. They had never seen one before.
The Crosstrek, with its unusually high ground clearance, handled snow like a champ. Unfortunately, it had a CVT (continuously variable transmission) and small engine that together offered zero pick up. It was borderline hazardous at times trying to pull out onto busy roads, because you needed a lot of runway to get going.
Between that and my anti-Subaru spouse, I decided to trade it in.
And this time, we entered the fabulous world of luxury cars.
We had never owned a fancy car (our term for BMW, Lexus, Acura, Audi and Mercedes, as well as brands out of our reach like Porsche and Maserati).
I had never even driven one, though I had ridden in them now and then. I’ve never cared about brand status in anything, especially cars.
But my wife and I decided that it would be fun to test drive a few fancy cars, just to say we did. And we headed off to the luxury segment promised lands with no expectations other than expensive prices.
The Lexus was … fine. Interior was nice, but it was super boring to drive. The Acura we never test drove because my wife was still stuck on having a 3-row vehicle to ferry around various soccer team members or random family, while I thought it was time to downsize to a more normal two rows. The MDX vs. RDX discussion didn’t go well, and we left.
A few days later, we had some time on our hands and decided to visit Audi. I had never considered a convertible before, but they had an A3 that had been sitting on the lot for almost a year. Apparently it was basic, and people who bought Audis wanted more features than that one contained.
I got into the car, turned the key and … I had never driven a vehicle that felt like that Audi. The connection between the road and the wheel was perfect. Every little adjustment I made happened exactly the way I wanted it to. And the acceleration? After the Crosstrek, hitting the gas in the Audi felt like being shot out of a cannon.
We loved that, with the push of a button, the Audi’s top would go down (or back up) in exactly 18 seconds. It was a stunning improvement over the hoisted Wrangler hard top.
I liked it, a lot. But the price was just over $40,000, and it was a convertible (though it did have a decent back seat). That combo was out of our ballpark.
We thanked the sales person, and tottered off to BMW for more adventure. [Note: The BMW 3-series sedan felt almost as tight as that Audi, and definitely was a pleasure to drive. The price was even higher than the Audi, though. No bueno.]
A couple of days later, as I sat in the Ball Corporation boardroom during a senior management meeting, my phone pinged. I hazarded a glance at the screen (you had to be careful in those meetings with looking like you weren’t paying attention).
It was a text from the Audi sales guy. It read, simply, “What would you offer?”
I quickly responded, “$30,000.”
No answer. The meeting continued, then ended. I walked back to my office and started working.
Ping! “$32,000,” countered the sales guy. Almost $10,000 less than the initial price.
Today, we still have that 2015 Audi A3 convertible. And we all love driving it. [Note: The odometer has 16,700 miles on it. Low-slung convertibles, even with Quattro, can struggle in Colorado winters. It was a third-car garage queen there. Georgia is almost perfect for it, though.]
The Audi (new) experience led to my wife’s 2016 Infiniti QX60 (new), which she loved and held up well until the CVT started to fail at 80,000 miles in 2025. A 2017 BMW X3 (used) did well until its 9th year, when a number of small-but-annoying bits began to fail (like the disappearing gear shift indicator, or the occasionally screeching inside alarm noise). The 2009 Honda CR-V we sold to my wife’s mom returned in 2017, when we bought it back from her and she bought a new … CR-V.
Meanwhile, we acquired two used Mazda CX-5’s (2016 and 2017) for our kids. One CX-5 came with extensive hail damage that meant a $10,000 discount. Our son named it “Dinger” (also the name of the Colorado Rockies’ mascot) and still loves it.
When we sold the Infiniti and traded in the BMW we added a new, 2-row Acura RDX for my wife (I finally won the two- vs. three-row argument, though my wife probably doesn’t recall it) to our Audi and used Mazda CX-30. I hope we are now set for the next decade.
We tried a couple of times to buy an EV. It would be perfect for me and my many small trips around town. But either the prices or the styling didn’t appeal to us, and while I signed up to be an early adopter of the forthcoming Slate electric truck, I have put that on hold.
At one point in 2024 we even put down a deposit on the new Mazda CX-90 plug-in hybrid but balked – which turned out to be wise, because that specific model has had numerous reliability issues, according to Consumer Reports.
All told, over 43 years, that’s 21 vehicles, by my count. Someone who is good at math could probably come up with how often the two of us bought a different car over that time (I’m guessing one every four years each, but like I said …).
So Thom, have you and your wife bought more than 21 vehicles since the early 80s? If not, then I guess you’re right. And I … win?