To buy a new car or not to buy a new car? That is Shakespeare’s great cliché … I mean struggle. Because I don’t really want a new car. And I don’t entirely need one. But it’s beginning to look like that’s the future. Yeesh!
I don’t drive all that much. A trip to the grocery store is a long journey for me. The mileage on my cars is so low that mechanics wonder how I managed to roll back the digital odometers.
But one of my vehicles is drifting toward retirement, and I’ve started doing some shopping. I’m not one who gets excited about new cars. It’s just a thing to me. Four wheels with some miracle machine under the hood that goes, “Vroom! Vroom! VROOM!”
It’s a hassle buying one. Not the salesmen or price negotiations. More and more it’s wading through all the extras and add-ons and bells and whistles that come in our modern-day vehicles.
Do I really need a Starbucks dispenser in my car? Image-enhancing vanity mirrors? A leather iPhone cradle that massages my tired device?
Safety, fuel economy and reliability? Who cares? Today’s cars are about one thing: gadgets. Buttons. Cool things you don’t need. Becoming the Swiss Army Knife of automobiles.
I took a rental car down to South Florida last year. They upgraded me to an option-loaded vehicle with the number of buttons NASA engineers dream about.
I must have hit one of those buttons, for as I drove around one night, a light started shining on my foot. It was pink. A pink light shining on my driving foot. Why was a pink light shining on my FOOT!?!
It seemed to be saying, “See? It’s still there, connected to your ankle. Now you can worry about other things … LIKE THAT BIG SEMI IN FRONT OF YOU!!!”
A million questions raced through my mind: Why would you need a light on your foot? Why is it pink? Is it for people who wear really expensive shoes and want to enjoy the sight of them as they drive? Most importantly, where’s the button to turn it off?
I hit every button I could find. Sunroofs opened. Tuna can openers emerged from dashboards.
Then I finally found it. A little button off to the side. When I pressed it, the light turned blue. Then red. Then yellow. Finally off. I wondered what such an option would cost. If there were people out there screaming for it. Willing to drop hard-earned cash for it. If it had been the career-crowning achievement for some automotive engineer. “Hey guys! Look what I invented! It lights up your foot!”
What do we really need in our cars? Airbags, OK. Satellite radio, I can’t live without. Seat belts, sure. But heated seats? I don’t need heated seats. Want to give me something I do need? How about a heated heater. That would be a mini-heater to warm up the arctic blast of cold air that car vents spit out each morning.
Backup cameras? But I don’t trust anything on TV. If I don’t think “Real Housewives” is real, why would I believe there’s a fence post behind my bumper?
Out in L.A. this summer, my friend used his backup camera religiously. Some days he drove to work in reverse. He wanted to get his money’s worth. Each night he carefully backed his car into the narrowest of driveways.
“You know, you could always pull it in forward,” I told him.
He didn’t have time for me. It was like he was docking a supply capsule to the International Space Station.
Maybe my disinterest is because my first car was anything but new. A 1965 Ford Mustang that was already 20 years old when I got it. The only bells and whistles were literally bells and whistles. They substituted for a horn. (I don’t think horns had been invented in 1965.)
There were no extras. If you had four wheels, you considered yourself lucky. Sometimes you didn’t even have hubcaps. They shot off into traffic when you stopped at red lights.
But it always got me where I wanted to go, and did it with style.
Ah, yes, style. Not many new cars have that. Or maybe there’s a button for it, right next to the pink-lit, image-enhancing vanity mirror.