Vroom vroom: car shopping with the Troglodytes

HALLIE EPHRON: My husband and I buy cars new and drive them into the ground. That's how we ended up with an 18-year-old Honda Civic. Yes, it still runs, reliable as all get out. But it was time to get something new. My car shopping was shaded by an experience I'd had a few weeks earlier, renting a car at the San Francisco Airport.

Enterprise has a weird system. You 'reserve' a compact basic sedan and end up getting whatever's available. Standing in the SFO parking garage, the first car that rolls down when it's my turn is a Volkswagen Beetle convertible. Uh, no. Waaaaay too small. Then they want to put me in an 8-passenger van. Too... you know. I'm starting to sound like Goldilocks.

The third car that rolls out is a Cadillac. I gather it's what they call a crossover. Not too big, not too small... And it has on-board nav and I'm running late so I take it. 

I get in and nothing, literally nothing, looks familiar. There's no key hole. In fact, there's no key. The dashboard is an array of places where you can wave your hand or touch a screen. A nice sales woman gets in and gives me the rundown on how the thing operates, which I promptly forget, but at least she programs the navigation system to get me to my hotel. 

I take off. Realizing immediately that instead of the GPS telling me where to turn, the audio system is broadcasting what sounds like a Chinese radio station. Loudly. I have no idea how to turn it down or switch it off and get it to broadcast directions. 

By now I'm in traffic. On the highway. And the AC is on full blast and I am freezing. And no, I cannot figure out how to turn it down. Or off. So I'd better open the window. But there's no recognizable window control.

I manage to turn off the damned radio (which also turns off the navigation system), fish out my phone, and get to where I'm going. I'm freezing by the time I get there but in one piece. At least it wasn't raining because I'd never have found the windshield wipers.

IMHOP, that car is way too smart for its own good. 

So, when I go car shopping a few weeks later, my criteria is NO TOUCH SCREENS! Knobs and buttons and open it with a key, please. We settle on a new Honda HR-V. 

See, its controls are basically in the same place as they were on our 2001 Civic, plus a slot for CDs (which may not have been invented in 2001.) 


Not too big. Not too small.  In other words, just right. We drove it home the next day, and they gave us a whopping $250 and didn't charge us to take the old car.

Have you car shopped lately? If you were, what would "just right" look like for you?