Saturday, May 31, 2008

Out with the Old, In with the New

Today, seven years to the day (if I recall correctly) since I drove it off the Chevrolet lot in Provo, the Fobmobile left our family to go to the big used car lot in the sky. Either that or the big used car lot in Kirkland--I'm not too sure where exactly the Kia dealer will be taking it.

Although the new car is more literally a Fobmobile than the last one, having come Fresh Off the Boat from Korea and then into our hands after a week of being stuck in the port of Tacoma (had to get its immigration papers in order), I think this new car will be called the Foxmobile. Foxy's name is first on the loan paperwork because she has slightly better credit than I do (though the dealer assured us that we both have impeccable credit, thank you very much), and at any rate after seven years of driving a car named after me it's time she had her turn.

The Foxmobile is a 2008 Kia Rondo. We decided on the Rondo because it seats up to seven people but is one of the most fuel efficient vehicles of its size. It's sort of a cross between a large station wagon and a small van, with just a touch of SUV thrown in. It's really not very large on the outside, but has that extra room on the inside for cargo on road trips or for giving people a ride without making them feel like the children's car seats are on the verge of shoving them out the window. We were close to getting a Mazda 5 instead, but we liked the fact that the Rondo is less minivanny and, with rebates, a couple thousand dollars cheaper. We'd been planning on buying a one- or two-year-old used vehicle, but the Rondo has only been around for a year and we couldn't find any used '07s that were more than a couple hundred dollars cheaper than we could get a brand new one.


As you can probably see, you wouldn't want to drive around with six full-grown passengers on a daily basis nor would it be possible to do so and also have anything more than a little duffel bag in back, but we can certainly fit a fifth person in comfortably (like when we're staying with my mom this summer and don't want to leave her stranded at home while we go gallivanting about Utah), and it's nice to have the seven-person capacity as an option.

But the absolute best feature of all, that which we've lusted after for seven years now (and honestly, all my life)?

Power locks and power windows (with remote entry, to boot). Welcome to the twenty-first century, J-Fob family. Or at least the last decade of the twentieth.

11 comments:

B.G. Christensen said...

PS The exterior color is not black, but Urban Gray. We considered Suburban White or Rural Brown, but we ultimately decided to be true to our urban roots. That way, when we drive through the suburbs people will be scared we're going to shoot them, and when we drive through the urbs we'll blend right in..

Mama said...

COOLNESS!!!!!! It looks very fun. If you're like me, you'll start making excuses to drive all over just for the fun of loading on in it.

And I mean this in the nicest possible way - but - doesn't it look a smidge like LD's birthday cake? Maybe his cake was urban yellow? :)

Mama said...

Oh - I was thinking of another good thing about having the third row of seats even if they only fit munchkin legs....

At least for me, when my kids were tiny like yours and they could not stop the "She's looking at me" and "She's staring out MY window when she has her oooown window" stuff - I would move one of their car seats to the third row and just leave the seat down in front of them so their feet had plenty of space.

And the fighting would stop.

Ohhhhh - it was a beautiful thing!!!!!

B.G. Christensen said...

Yeah, we based the car on the cake. And yes, being able to separate the kids when necessary was an advantage that occurred to us.

Mama said...

It's always wise to purchase a car that matches your kid's cake.

Hence, my car is Duncan Hines brown...with sprinkles. Love it! ;)

The car is cool and the cake is adorable and I hope you'll have no fighting in the back seat ever.

B.G. Christensen said...

It's a good thing LD didn't have a lemon cake for his birthday! (Ba-dum-ching)

TK said...

Cool! So is this the car that will pick me up from the airport on June 12th? (You did get my itinerary didn't you?)

B.G. Christensen said...

Yes and yes.

Tina said...

Awesome!! How fun to have a new car. .

Angie said...

Congratulations on your new car. It looks like a great car. That is too funny that you have never had power locks and windows before. When I bought my first car- even before I got married- I made sure it had power locks and windows because I knew once I had kids it would be a necessity.

B.G. Christensen said...

Yeah, I guess I wasn't so forward thinking. And I wasn't paying for the car myself, so overwhelmed as I was at Dad's generosity, I didn't want to take advantage of it by asking for more than the basics.