A Fair Trade

Ever since my brother got his Subaru CrossTrek last February, I was fairly green with envy over his heated seats.

My car, a 2015 Toyota RAV4, got great mileage, and had everything I wanted, but heated seats and fog lights. I didn’t think the heat worked all that well. Otherwise I loved it except for the fact, it was gray, which seemed to be the color of not only other RAV4s, but all other SUV models now.

The fact that the RAV was totally anonymous was driven home one day, when I had taken Mom to Perkins for breakfast. We left, I carried leftovers, walked out and I clicked the remote and saw the lights blink.  I walked to the RAV, opened the back door and put the bag of leftovers on the child seat.  As I was closing the door, I thought, “CHILD SEAT? I DON’T HAVE A CHILD SEAT!”

I clicked the remote again, but so did my RAV two cars down.

I removed the leftovers, and we got into the correct car and went home.

Back to Christmas, my brother is a total technoholic. Loves all the new stuff, doG bless him. That’s why I have an iPhone X, iPad and Mac Book Pro.  He gets a new one, and I get the nearly new older one.

Then he started Jonesing for a brand new 2020 CrossTrek. Since it is near the end of the year, we knew that dealers would salivate any potential sale, so I gave my bro the RAV.

Mom had a 2008 Milan, with only 12,500 and doesn’t drive and has been complaining about the insurance cost. So, we trekked up to the Subaru dealer, to see what we could do. Our deal was, the dealer pays off bro’s 2019, and gets John into a 2020 with no cash outlay.

It worked out pretty cool. My Dad had drummed into me that you always put another family member “or” on the title, in case something happened and you had to do something with the car, so with him on my title, and our plan to just add me to bro’s title when we get it, there wasn’t even any sales tax involved in the vehicle transfers.

John gets blind spot protections, lane change warnings, all the bells and whistles.  More stuff probably. Driving back from the dealer, all the stuff on the dash made my eyes glaze over. It was like seeing the display on the USS Enterprise. I don’t think I could handle that much.

Me, I got a ten month old car with just 20K on the ODO. I get my heated seats and fog lights. I get a display that shows me my Google Maps if I plug my phone in. I get heated mirrors, variable intermittent wipers. The stereo out rocks anything but the Nakamichi in my Lexus. The lift gate is 100% easier to lower than the RAV.

And I now know more than ever, no matter what anyone said, the heat on the RAV just wasn’t working properly.  The Subaru heats up faster, and when I change the way the vents should go, from  defog to feet to cabin, the vents act like I would expect.  The RAV never did.

I got alloy wheels, with much newer Yokohama Geolandars than I had.

We have had El Crapo weather these last few days, so I got to drive on yucky surfaces and it really feels different. Plus the fact that it drives more like my Lexus SC400 is a plus.

John is thrilled with his new car. I think we have a win-win.

Ironically, the CrossTrek is Dark Gray. Almost black and a fairly unique color. It’s a unique car. Unless I am home and John comes over and parks in the driveway.

The two cars are identical on the outside.

That cracks me up.

I’m much more excited than I ever was over the RAV.  I was just marveling before this all came up that I never was attached to it.

Guess it just kept me driving until I found the Subaru, which for certain reasons we have named Lilith.

Going to be happy driving.