New car

The other day I purchased a car. It is a 2009 Toyota Matrix. You can see it below:

As you can see, it is silver. Very silver! Not many pieces of black plastic trim slapped on there to get in the way when one is waxing it. Excellent. In its overall appearance, it has that modern-car-kind-of-lobed, overly-curvaceous appearance that most newish cars have (except the Scion xB, and that new Toyota SUV that looks like it is wearing a hat) and that I am not too wild about. It is not hideous, and it kind of has a cute face:


I think the face looks like some kind of chubby little animal that is very happy to see the viewer. What do you think?

Its appropriate that its face looks a bit chubby, when you consider its very wide rear end. I'm not sure the photos communicate it quite right, but even for a hatchback the car has a rather large aft region. Which is great because it means more storage space! Yes!

Some of you may be wondering why I have selected this car, so here is a brief rundown of the features of this make/model/year/specific vehicle that interested me particularly.

Reliability - the previous years of this model have all had very good reliability, as reported in several different places/reviews/etc. This model year has a somewhat different engine than previous years, but no problems have been reported yet.

Cargo - the seats fold down to form a nice big flat surface on which to put dogs. Of course, most hatchbacks do this, so this isn't really specific to this model. What is specific to this model (and its twin, the lovely Pontiac Vibe) is that the cargo area including the backs of the rear seats is all hard plastic. This is excellent, as dog hair will not cling to the upholstery - this was a constant battle in my last car, Carl.

Fuel efficient and good EPA smog rating - this model and year seemed to have quite high MPG (26-32) and air pollution score (6) as seen on the fueleconomy.gov website. It gets less mpg than say a diesel, but since I live in a city I was concerned about the poor cyclists, like myself. Of course now there is the VW clean diesel Jetta wagon....but its too new still for me to afford. Someday....

Manual - I only looked at cars that offered manual transmission...for personal reasons I suppose, and other than the Honda Fit they usually get better gas mileage, supposedly.

Safety - I really lucked out finding this car that came with the optional side airbags, raising its side crash rating from 3 to 4 stars! If I recall the front crash ratings were quite good for all the models I was looking at.

The negative points of the car are that the outside appearance is not too thrilling to me (lots of people say they like it, I think I just prefer the way older cars look) and that it is somewhat difficult for me to see out the back because I am so short. It is better than the Prius I was in, and hasn't really been a hinderance so far.

Hmm, let's see what else...the interior is comfortable and 'cool' in silver and black with some blue accents in the fabric...there is a 6 disc CD player, which is probably more than I can handle...it has cruise control, functioning A/C...no sunroof, but electric windows and such. It has heated wing mirrors - I had never heard of that before, but I suppose its a good thing.

Well, that's enough blathering on about the new car. It needs a name. And possibly a vanity plate (6 letters only, plus one space allowed). Suggest away :)