Car Shopping, Part 2, the Final Episode
Wooo hooo! On Saturday, we bought our second car — 2006 Honda Civic Hybrid. Exterior is “Magnetic Pearl,” which is like deep metallic navy.
We are very happy with the price we paid, especially when considering the condition of the car. This Honda-certified baby was barely used, owned by 1 person for about 3 months, driven for just under 4000 miles.
We’re not crazy about the two-tone interior, blue and cream. But hey, I’ll be in the driver’s seat most of the time, so I don’t have to look at it very much! And I think it’s growing on us already.
Not pictured here, but the dash display is on two levels — spedometer, gas gauge, and the engine temperature at the top, and RPM and other stuff at the bottom. Radio pictured here is pretty standard, the CD player accepts MP3 CDs. Haven’t tried the standard auxiliary port with my iPod yet!
The startup is really quiet, you almost can’t hear it. Some of the quirky stuff includes the automatic engine shut-off when you are idle — so releasing the brake and pressing on the gas “starts” the engine again, which gives you a little rumble every time you move forward at the light.
We test drove 2007, 2006, and 2005 Civic Hybrid. 2005 was nice and solid — but it felt rather ordinary. I really like the design on 2007 and 2006 (they’yre the same, I think) — it’s much more sleak.
Best of all, we’ve been saying for the last few years that we want a hybrid — and we finally have one! This one is a big yummy.
Woohoo! Congrats on the new car purchase. Looks spiffy.