We’ve been a 2 car family for some time. I typically drove the tan colored Dodge man-van and Emily drove a green Chevy Lumina. The van was fairly new but we had the Lumina for awhile…it was 10 years old and starting to get wrinkles and excess gas. I mean that…the old girl had a few dings and started smelling like gas. We did our duty and took her to the mechanic to find the gas leak problem. They spent all sorts of time (and all sorts of our money) looking for the problem to no avail. We coped for awhile but finally decided that our family going out in a fiery car crash was not the way to go (at least until I get much older).

We started doing our homework and decided we needed a few things in our new car. First, we needed space for Isaac to grow. He’s becoming gigantic with no signs of a slowdown in the near future. He wears the same size shoes as I do (he’s 9) and he’s approaching Emily’s height. I didn’t want the backseat to be too large though. Isaac will be driving before too long. Enough said. We also decided we wanted a car with all-wheel drive. Winters here aren’t awful, but we do definitely get snow and it can be a problem at times. Safety was important because we figured Isaac will learn to drive on this car. By the way, 15 year olds should not drive. It’s crazy! And boys especially should not drive until they are 30. I once was a boy and I remember some of testosterone induced stupidness of 15 to 30 year olds. Finally, I wanted a car that polluted as little as possible and got good gas mileage, etc.

We looked at the Honda CR/V, the Toyota Rav/4 and the Subaru Forester. We didn’t like any of those options for various reasons. While we were at the Subaru dealer, we spotted an Outback that was beside the Forester on the showroom floor. It looked cool.

We decided to drive the Outback and that was all she wrote as they say.  It had all those things I mentioned above plus heated seats!  There were a few other cool features that made it even better…it is a PZEV car (partial zero emission vehicle) which means there are times when it runs that it release no emissions.  It also has a continuously variable transmission (CVT).  The details are fairly interesting but let’s just say it is heavy on cool and also enhances fuel economy.

So we drove Steve home.  You see, like many people, we name our vehicles and this one is named Steve.  He’s green and he’s green.  We like Steve!

And of course, in typical fashion, the man-van (Bessie) started slipping out of gear right after we trade the car.  Mind you, this is not an old van.  We bought it new and have had all of the maintenance done on it since day one.  It is a serious heap.  We’ve had one problem after another but keep thinking, “this will be it…once we fix xyz, it will be fine.”  I will never buy another Dodge again (sorry to all my Dodge friends).  We may go have a look at Steve’s twin Ronny…