Simple pleasures

I guess I'm easily impressed.

I got a new car over the weekend. It's nothing special - a 2007 Chevy Cobalt. I got tired of thinking - twice a day, to and from work - "This'll probably get me there." I got tired of unexpected, multi-hundred-dollar repairs. I got tired of wondering, "What's that noise now?"

So, we wanted to get something that was going to be reliable - so, newer - and get better gas mileage. And we did. We actually made a list of about 2 dozen wants and have-to-haves that would describe a car that we'd buy. We found one with all of the have-to-haves and most of the wants. I would have liked a sunroof (mostly for ventilation purposes when parked outside) and that it not have previously been a rental, but you can't get everything you want.

I've never been a big car guy. I don't care about the alleged status of having a particular style or make of vehicle. Mostly, I want my car to be a car. I want it to get me where I'm going. Like I said, the 2 main concerns I had were that it be reliable and be a gas-mileage improvement. I don't much care about a lot of features and gadgets and doo-dads. The car I traded in didn't have a CD or tape deck or anything like that. AM/FM, that's it.

So, in looking for the new car, I wasn't much concerned about the features it might have. I wanted cruise control, as it helps conserve fuel. I would have liked a sunroof, but it wasn't a reason to not look at a car. I've been fine for 2 years with just a radio, I would have been fine continuing that way.

That said, I think a couple of the features my new car does have are really cool. They're probably nothing to impress a real car guy, but I like them. The radio (which does have a CD player) can be set to automatically increase and decrease its volume based on the speed I'm driving, so as to counteract the additional noise of driving at higher speeds. Also, it's got 6 preset channel buttons. I can set it to have anywhere from 1 to 6 "pages" of presets (i.e., 1 page = 6 preset channels, 6 pages = 36 preset channels). The cool thing, different from any other car I've had before, is that I don't necessarily have toggle between AM and FM presets. One any one page, I can have any combination of AM, FM (and XM, were my vehicle so equipped, which it is not) channels. Neither of these are huge deals, but I like not having to raise and lower the volume so I can hear at 55 but not force others to share my music at red lights, and I like not having to switch between AM and FM to cover my 6 most-listened-to stations.

Another thing I like is that it's got a "Driver Information Center." Where it typically displays the odometer (and outside temperature - I admit it, this is why I bought the car, I absolutely refuse to driver a machine that does not tell me the outside temperature), I can scroll through 2 trip odometers (don't know that I'll use either, let alone 2), an estimate of how far the current tank of gas will take me based on my driving conditions, what percentage of the oil's life is left, the coolant temperature, and - this is the one I really like - an MPG calculator. It counts from the last time it was reset (which was this morning before I left for work), and tells you from that point your overall mileage per gallon. Of course I have only today's trip to and from work to calculate so far. I got 39.3 mpg, according to my car. (In my last car, I was lucky to get 29). If today's mileage holds, I'll save about 3 gallons each week. Not bad.