The first up on the block for upgrading was Luigi (my Omnia 2). When I last upgraded, there were apps for Audible, ereader, Slingbox, etc that were only available for WM so it made sense to get a WM phone. And I really like Luigi. Huge screen, fast, lots of memory, camera flash; what could happen to change my mind? Well MS announced that nothing on WM7 would work on WM 6.5 and below.
Luigi's new clothes - much cheaper than new phone |
That was the cheap crisis.
Passat is more practical than our other drive |
I thought I might like a different car. I have a '06 Passat with 4motion. It's pretty awesome. When I first saw the VW Passat on the street, I loved it. When I decided to trade in my GTI I took the opportunity to check out a mildly used one. It's green with beige leather. It has lights that turn when you go round corners; a lane change mode on the turn signal (1 touch, 3 flashes), sat nav and those 30 cool things they added to the Passat. I checked the specs and yesss they upgraded the engine to actually have performance. I drove into the city with one car and came home with another.
But I had seen the BMW Gran Turismo in New Scientist and really liked the styling (other than the pedestrian friendly front end). I've seen another sweet BMW, the X6. Then Honda came out with the Crosstour. Not really hot on the front end but we have a dealership in town advertising 0.9% financing and I'm liking Norden a lot less than I did when I had my GTI. So I test drove the Honda. Nice drive but not nicer than my car. I feel like I'm giving up a lot of luxe features for a newer vehicle. Then I checked the balance of my car loan. Another crisis averted! I washed and cleaned my Passat and it's like new. In a couple years I may trade it for an Acura ZDX if I could ever get used to *that* front end. If VW has something similar I could also head look at it too at a different dealership.
I'm glad my cheap side came through again. Truly none of the cars I could afford evoke as much emotion as my Passat did. While I would like the X6, I had to get my Passat flat-bedded to the city because of a steering column lock failure (yay warranty; yay failing in the garage). The truck driver said he hauls lots of BMWs in. Beemers - still finicky after all these years.