I have about a year’s worth of payments on my '02 Dodge Neon, and it’s been a great little car*, I plan to drive the wheels off it, primarily to screw over the town, as excise tax/registration is brutally expensive on new cars (the Neon cost around $300 to register when it was new in '02). and the longer I hold onto my car, the cheaper registration gets (just re-registered today, $115, still expensive by my standards…) and it’s quite economical on gas (high 30’s to low 40’s highway)
but Nooooo, D/C had to go and release the Dodge Caliber, the replacement for the Neon platform, and I like it for many reasons;
first, and most importantly, it’s a hatchback, I love the utility of hatchbacks, yes it’s a 5-door hatch, and i’d prefer a 2-door, but…
secondly, it’s NOT CUTE, the Neon’s a nice little car, but the engineers that designed it overdosed on cute-pills, I don’t want my car to say “HI!” I want it to say PISS OFF!! I want my car to look mean, nasty, and tough, I’m antisocial and hate people, I want my car to look MEAN
if I wasn’t still making car payments on my Neon, I’d be seriously considering the Caliber, but I won’t be buying one, at least not right away, mainly because…
1; I’m still making payments on the Neon
2; I’ve promised myself that my next vehicle (when the Neon finally craps out) will be either a Diesel (Biodiesel or Biodiesel Hybrid), or (if they exist) Hydrogen Fuel Cell vehicle, NOT for the treehugging hippie crap reasons of “saving the earth”, mind you, no i want a car that extends a big, metaphoric middle finger to the oil companies, a car that says “screw you, OPEC, i don’t need your crap”**
*(yes, yes, i know that the words “great little car” and “Dodge Neon” don’t generally go together, but my little Neon has been quite reliable)
**(I know that conventional diesels still use petrofuels and oil for cold starts and engine lubrication, they just use less than an equivalent gasoline powered vehicle)
