I was forced to finally give up on my well-loved 1995 Nissan Maxima. 14 years and 195,000 miles later, I was still in love with it. But one day I got rained on — while driving the car! I have to drive past a quarry every day to go to work, and have had to replace my windshield 6 times due to flying rocks off the back of the gravel trucks that shattered windshield after windshield. That took a toll on the edge of the roof at the top of the windshield. Believe it or not, I had rust-through right along that edge, and the rain came in!
So off I went to test-drive new cars. I’m not very good with salesmen – I’d rather get a root canal. What a day! The Nissan folks were very nice and patient, and not too pushy. The Toyota salesmen were non-existent, I had to go hunting for one. And they lied about everything when we finally got one to “help” us. And then there was Honda. If you look up pushy salesman in the dictionary, you’ll find their picture. They wanted me to agree to buy a car before they would even show me one!
I was good. I smiled. I didn’t yell at anyone. I didn’t stomp out. I even tried a Toyota hybrid. Don’t know how anyone drives them! I have to merge onto expressways, and cross busy streets without the benefit of stoplights, and the hybrid hesitated so badly accelerating from a stop that I nearly got killed on the test drive.
I tried every Nissan, Honda, and Toyota model available, and in the end I came back to the Nissan Maxima. The 2010 is a lot different from my 1995, but it still “fits” me. It felt like an old friend the very first time I sat in it. And it doesn’t hurt that it’s gorgeous! I got a great deal, thanks to a weekend of serious internet shopping. I got it in Ocean Gray, which is a medium greyed blue. And after 3 weeks, we’ve finally bonded enough for me to give it a name. I took the name from the lead male character in the movie “Sabrina”. Either version – Humphrey Bogart or Harrison Ford. Exactly the right personality.
Meet Linus.
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