minivan

Always swore that I'd never buy a minivan.
Never conceived that I'd own a vehicle with leather seats.
And am very wary of built in DVD systems in vehicles.

But with the pragmatics of ferrying small children and their friends thither and yon, the larger vehicle makes sense (seats more people, more car seats). The leather and DVD player just happened to be there, though we weren't looking for them when we were scoping new wheels.

But what prompted such a purchase was the final failure of our ever-faithful 1995 honda civic hatchback (178,000 miles). We loved that car and have driven it across the country, commuted from Georgia to South Carolina in it (cf. the opening of my "home" essay; that's the car). Over the last two years it's been stolen and returned (as part of a police sting operation on a ring of honda thieves no less), wrecked and fixed. Put a new A/C system in it last Spring ($2K) and a new clutch two weeks ago (and new tires last month). But something caused it to overheat, the head gasket blew, the engine fried, and we were looking at way too much money to get it fixed again. But someone who loves those cars bought it and will fix it up so that it may finally make that 200K miles we wanted it to make.

So now we have a 2003 Honda Odyssey in great condition with only 38,000 miles (perhaps they only drove it on weekends?). Not looking forward to having to fill this thing up with gas. But it's a great vehicle.