I am trying to be good, honest.
Although I am busy walking when I would have driven and even bought a bike this summer, I do still need a car and my lease on my little buzz box is up in a few months and I will need to replace it.
So, in order to put my money where my mouth is, I have decided that my next car will be the dull, dull but relatively clean Toyota Prius. If you are not fussed by cars then you'll not understand it, but I love cars. I love especially fast, sporty cars. Yes, if you're a man and you're driving a Porsche (preferably Carrera) then I may well find you more attractive than if you're not driving one. I wait with impatience for the day they bring out the environmentally friendly Mercedes SLK, as that's what I'd like to be going to order if it wasn't so smelly. A metallic oyster beige one, with cream leather seats, just in case you are wondering - not that I've thought about it much!!
Anyway, until they bring out the SLKe for environmental, I am doing what everybody who can afford it should be and reducing the CO2 emissions of those journeys that I will still make by car.
If Toyota are prepared to sell me a one, that is.
I booked via the internet a test drive for this morning. Turned up on time, introduced myself so that they would know that I was there and sat down. After a 20 minute wait I went up and reminded them I'd made an appointment and had been waiting 20 minutes. In fact, I had to say this twice to get the young man (oh goodness, I must be getting old) to actually apologise for asking me to wait for the only man of the four in the showroom who seemed to be able to sell a customer a car.
After 30 minutes, the man who was meant to be showing me the car and taking me for a test drive finally made his way up to me; I asked him if he had been expecting me (which he had been) and then thanked him for wasting an hour of my time (if you include time to get to the showroom) and told him how I was now going to buy my Toyota from someone else!
Very satisfying!
Anyway, my flounce seemed to have done the trick as the boss man from Bromley Toyota has been leaving apologetic messages on my phone.
This has been a useful learning experience for me; I think if I had done the same with the men in my life (especially the Porsche driving ones) then I may have got them leaving apologetic messages on my phone as well and who knows where I'd be now!
p.s. I love fast, sporty cars....I hate, hate, hate SUVs!!
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3 comments:
To my mind, most people think exactly as you do about this. If a zero-emmission vechicle was available, practical and afordable, they would definitly choose it over a fossil fuel car. I think govt policy should be targeted towards increasing the pace of technological advancement in this area. Currently they seem to be leaning towards increasing the cost to persuade you to drive less - but that feels like simply pricing the "less well off" off the road.
Yes, sometimes I feel like writing to other car manufacturers telling them how much I wanted to buy one of their cars but I'm not because they're not environmentally friendly!
However I am seeing more Prius' on the road in London so hopefully as being more green becomes more fashionable the other car manufacturers will get on the bandwagon - hopefully there's loads in the design and development stage already!
My parents are thinking of buying a Prius, and I went with them a few months ago to test drive it. I really enjoyed it, it was good fun and I didn't find it dull at all. There's a setting on the display screen where it shows you the power flow around the car in real time, when it's running on petrol, when it's running off the battery, and when it's capturing and recycling the energy from braking, it was mesmerising to watch.
Obviously, they gave us the top model with all the gizmos to try out, and the Prius with the top-model computer can park itself. We spent about an hour taking it in turns to parallel park with computer assistance, how sad is that?!
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