Old Car & New Car

We bid adieu to our once trusty steed and friend. Together we have been to 26 different states. We've seen both the Atlantic and Pacific. We've been to the great state of Texas, the ever green state of Washington (where the ol' gal lived for a long spell), the hills of west Virgina, and the plains of the great Midwest. It's sad to see her go. She made it through sub-zero temperatures in Illinois, the baking sun of Utah and the humid air of North central Texas. Below are some pictures. Sadly, we did not take them. They come from their new yet temporary owner: Brent Brown Ford.



Now we welcome a new member into the family. We debated so long whether to get a new car now or later, new or used, etc. It was a tough decision. After realizing that with the dealer incentives and Curtis' stellar employee discount that we would only lose about $110 from driving a new car off the lot, we decided to take the plunge. After boring talks with Al (what a great car salesman name by the way) trying to sell us something we already intended to buy and paying a hefty yet modest down payment we drove away with this beauty. If we pay the rest off by April 2009 we will actually save an additional $200. If we do it by August we will break even. In the end, a purchase now has given of a sense of security. Plus, it will only improve our already extraordinary credit rating.



The car so far gets ~40 mpgs highway and 24 mpgs city. Although we didn't want the SYNC system, I love it now. SYNC was developed jointly by Ford and Microsoft to provide cars with a voice activated handsfree phone and media system. So, our car has a 400 MHz processor, 256mb RAM, and 2gb solid state memory. It also has bluetooth and USB for connecting phones and media players respectively. It runs some version of Windows, but of course there is no typical display. I guess it is a good thing that we got power windows so we can quickly close them if the system locks up (hahaha)! But seriously, Ford was smart enough to keep the SYNC system separate from the actually important part of the car.

One cool feature that I must mention is the fact that you can plug in a USB storage device (Formatted with a FAT filesystem which is normal for flash drives) loaded with music and the car will play it right from the device. There is actually no need for an iPod or anything.