Courtesy of Toyota of Bellevue via Flickr

Cars are not my thing.  I hate buying cars.  I buy one every eight to ten years. The salespeople are well, icky.  I don’t know what I want. I buy by color. Last spring the beloved husband replaced his car.  He had 80,000 miles.  I had about 30,000 on my eight-year-old car. He had good reasons why I should replace mine.

• It may be totally worthless in another year
• Since I was retiring, I may as well get a new one to age with me (this was a dumb reason)
• New cars had new toys on them (now this one intrigued me)

Courtesy of garyhymes via Flicker

In the course of his purchase I became familiar with things like back-up cameras, a compass in the rear view mirror, seat heaters, climate control for passengers (there are hardly ever passengers in my car), auto trunk opener and (drum roll please) smart buttons! This is keyless ignition. You have this little doohickey in your pocket or purse and the car just knows that you are its owner and starts right up. My friend Bettie had a car with a smart button. As I remember, we went to lunch once and her car was so quiet she forgot to turn it off so it ran the entire time we ate our burger in the restaurant.

These toys were intriguing for someone with an eight-year-old car. I checked off a bunch of options, went into a dealer and asked to look at the current year’s red color. I had a red car, loved it and wanted another red car. Yuk! The red color was a bit orangey and flashy.  The flashy part was ok but the color may not work with my purple clothes. With a heavy heart, I selected a blue shade.

Now I had to figure out which car I wanted (color is always the first part of picking a car). After much haggling (mostly by the beloved husband – I am not a great haggler), I bought a Toyota Venza.  Yes, I bought it last spring during all the bad press Toyota was having. My statistical engineer brother taught me that the best time to fly was after a major crash involving passenger deaths so this was the same kind of thing. In any case it was a great time to get a great price. I also got the smart button which I flaunted to all of my friends and the beloved husband (who didn’t get that feature but he did get the tushy warmer with the leather seats).  That is until yesterday.

It didn’t work. The darn car wouldn’t start. There is no back-up key to use. I checked for keyholes all over the dashboard and there were none.  After considerable whining (I was on my way to Starbucks for coffee so this all happened pre-nice Kate who only comes out after the coffee) I resorted to reading the manual. Car manuals are written by people who use English as a tenth language.  It comes after Hindi, Farsi, Swahili, Chinese, etc. It took considerable time while I cross referenced everything. Then I found the secret.  If you put on the hand brake and hold down that silly smart button, it will start.

That is all fine but I can’t waste time starting a car. So off I went to the dealer (after I got a huge Starbucks mocha latte which I clearly deserved). All is well, I somehow rebooted the thing. I do have some suggestions for potential car buyers.

• Always check your color selection first – no point wasting time when the manufacturer isn’t stylish.
• Get all the features you want – you may not get another car for a while and you should be happy.
• On a bad day, I’d be leery of that smart button but on the whole I love it.