I bought a new car today: a silver 2007 Honda Civic EX sedan.
How did I end up choosing the Civic? By process of elimination.
First, I eliminated all American car manufacturers. It’s unfortunate, but I just don’t feel like GM, Chrysler and Ford are making cars that have the reliability of Toyota and Honda.
No, wait — I didn’t eliminate American car manufacturers first. I eliminated French car manufacturers first. My first car was actually French: a Renault Le Car. It was actually a pretty good little car. But I eliminated the French car manufacturers for political reasons.
Despite my decision not to go with a hybrid, I still wanted very good gas mileage. After some research, that left me with three cars that combined good gas mileage and reliability: the Honda Civic, the Toyota Corolla, and the Toyota Yaris.
I test drove the Yaris a few weeks ago, just to see whether it would work for me. It’s a nice car, and relatively inexpensive. However, because it’s intended as a low-end, inexpensive car, it didn’t come standard with some of the features I wanted (things like variable intermittent wipers and cruise control). I would have had to special order one to be made to my specifications and shipped from Japan.
That left the Corolla and the Civic. After test-driving both last week, I decided I just liked the Civic better. So I bought one today.
Still to come… where I bought a Honda Civic.