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.