By Mickey Dunaway | Reprinted with Permission by Currents Magazine | DEC 1, 2023 | Cornelius, NC.

Have you bought a new car recently?  I have.  More about that shortly.

I bought my first new car in August 1969 after graduating from Auburn.  A Pontiac Lemans Coupe.  V8. Vinyl interior.  Radio.  Vinyl top.  Automatic.  Made in Detroit.  I paid $3500 for the new Pontiac Lemans.

I took out a loan for that new Pontiac with my mother’s co-signing.  I had a job, but my first paycheck was not yet deposited.  In a month, I would be teaching and coaching in the Mobile, Alabama Public Schools, making $6200 a year.  A beautiful new wife would be making more at International Paper than I was as a teacher.  A new car.  A new apartment and a new job.  I knew what heaven looked like in Mobile, Alabama, in August 1969.

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Now, about my latest new vehicle.

It is a midsize SUV.  Four-cylinders. 270 HP.  All-wheel drive.  Leather interior.  Harmon Kardon sound system with 12 speakers.  Sweet.  I will let you guess its country of origin.  And though I won’t give you the bottom line, it was over $40K.  About average for an SUV these days.

These days, if you are like me, you will do hours of research on Edmunds.com, Consumer Reports.com, and Car and Driver, sorting out reputable manufacturers, types of vehicles, and models in the type of vehicle you will eventually settle on.  And you will have just begun.

Hopefully, the dreaded minivan is out of the picture for you by this time of your life unless the grandchildren have reentered the picture.  If children must be factored into the equation of a vehicle with the spouse, do not hint that an SUV is just like a minivan, only sportier.  If the minivan is in the picture, the SUV is out of it.

If you are considering an electric, semi-electric, sometimes electric, mild electric, or hybrid electric vehicle, there are questions you must answer, and they are increasing with each fanciful commercial. 

Full electric or hybrid.  Big difference.  Full hybrid or plug-in hybrid.  The plug-in hybrid will get you about 40 miles, and then it kicks over to the gas engine.  Big difference again.  Recently, I discovered this vehicle called a “mild hybrid.” 

From the ad of a prominent European automaker:   Mild hybrid.  No plug-in is required.  Every drop of fuel saved helps – and in our mild hybrids, you enjoy lower fuel consumption without experiencing performance compromises.  (https://www.volvocars.com/us/cars/xc90/).

If you understand that logic, please let me know because I am totally lost in the “Electric Vehicle Forrest.” However, I sure wish I had written that bit of phraseology. 

Without thinking about it enough, I recently hinted to my oldest son that I was thinking about going down the EV route.  I can’t quote his first sentence, but his second sentence was, “Are you completely nuts?  Do you really want to risk running out of juice between Cornelius and Marietta!?” 

Good question.  I had thought of it and begun to believe that the government would have electric-juice stations at every Interstate exit, and it would only take ten minutes to fill up my new electric SUV. 

Yes, I had bought into that slightly out-of-focus commercial with the happy family showing family pictures on the side of a rock wall in a national park.  Yeah right.  Talk about fantasy.  Getting the entire family together for movie night with a projector powered by the battery of your new EV may be the most fantastical car ad I have ever seen.

Eventually, I knew the time would come when I had to listen to my son’s logic.  Just didn’t think it would be this soon.  But I listened and forgot about the EV, the Hybrid, and the Mild Hybrid.  For the foreseeable future, I am sticking to my trusty gasoline-powered midsize SUV with all the bells and whistles I will never understand.  However, when I crank up, it does greet me with my first name.  How can that be improved upon?

?????????????????????

Can you guess the brand and model I bought using the word scrabble below? Place the letter in the correct order in the boxes below.

Need some help? Here are some clues.

1. The brand ranked #1 in Customer Satisfaction by J.D. Power
2. Built in Indiana
3. Every model in its lineup has a four-cylinder engine.
4. Most drivers pulled over for speeding are driving this brand, but not the model I purchased.

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[Life is] like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

E. L. Doctorow