January 23, 2004

Sparky is here!

The car, she is ours!

We spent a couple hours at Evanston Toyota last night buying our Prius (whose name, as you may have guessed, is Sparky. Thanks AmyC for the suggestion way back in October.)

It drives quite nicely, and has super bright headlights (though not as bright so as to blind our fellow drivers). The only noticable difference in the drive compared to a "normal" car is that there's a slight lag when you press the gas coming off a stop (at a red light or whatever) -- basically a split-second hesitation as the computer governing acceleration figures out what to tell the engines.

The fact that I don't have to unlock it or put a key in the ignition (both benefits of a special keyfob that alerts the car to my presence) is novel, and I suspect after a while with Sparky I'll forget that other cars don't offer this convenience. The shifter and push-button parking will take some getting used to. And I averaged approximately 40 miles per gallon on my drive to work this morning. That average will no doubt improve once I'm not driving through snow flurries.

The stereo is not quite what I was hoping for. The standard speaker package is a bit muddy, with not enough bass definition; I'll have to check whether there's an equalizer. I can always upgrade them later, of course. And really, it's a minor quibble.

Posted by Andrew Huff at January 23, 2004 05:23 PM
Comments

You sound pretty grown up there Huffy. The radio is a minor quibble? *faint* What's a bad ass car without a bad ass radio to shake your groove thing in while sitting in traffic?

glad that you got Sparky home!

Posted by: Roni at January 24, 2004 11:10 AM

Push button parking, what is that?

Posted by: Schiano at January 24, 2004 01:50 PM

Awww, you picked my name! I'm honored. You'll have to drive over some day and take us for a spin.

Posted by: amyc at January 24, 2004 03:11 PM

To park, you press the "park" button. There's no park setting on the gear shift.

Posted by: Andrew at January 24, 2004 03:56 PM

Oh, I thought that the thing actually parked itself -- like "Computer- Will- Parallel- Park"

Posted by: Normal Today at January 24, 2004 07:49 PM

The Japanese Prius does parallel park itself (it's an option.)

Congrats on the ridiculously high MPG, Andrew! Glad to hear the car deals with the snow well.

Posted by: Paul at January 26, 2004 12:33 PM

Congrats.

Is this one of those cars that talks to you, though? Those unnerve me.

Posted by: Jeff at January 27, 2004 04:59 AM

the car has a dvd navigation package that andrew didn't choose, if i remember correctly. it does talk to you and can get a little annoying if you are test driving the car and can't get the polite woman giving you automated directions to shut the hell up because you have no idea how to turn her off. not that it happened to me, i'm just saying...

Posted by: unmute at January 27, 2004 06:41 AM

unmute is correct, my car doesn't talk to me. It would only distract me from the voices in my head.

Posted by: Andrew at January 27, 2004 11:11 AM

Wow, I was just checking out the Toyota site - the car comes with Bluetooth?!! Did you get that option? Built in speakerphone for bluetooth cell phones. Fantastic.

Posted by: Ryan at January 28, 2004 10:53 AM

The Bluetooth only comes in the fully-loaded model; we got the next one down. So no, no Bluetooth for us. (my cellphone isn't compatible anyway.)

Posted by: Andrew at January 28, 2004 01:50 PM