A Car Named Fred

More than a year ago, I came out of the closet. (No, not that one. I’ve been out of that closet for decades.) I came out as an owner of a SUV, a hulking 1998 Ford Explorer that my husband inherited years ago.

In my confession, I said that we’d had it, that rising gas prices and embarrassment meant that the Explorer had to go. With an average fuel efficiency rating of 16 miles per gallon, the Explorer was costing us a fortune and doing nothing good for the planet either.

Well, I’m embarrassed again to admit that it took more than a year -- and a hefty incentive from the government in the form of the Cash for Clunkers program – but last night we picked up our new more fuel-efficient car. And while a year ago, I said I would never consider buying an American car because I was so angry at Detroit, we ended up buying American.

After much agonizing, we ended up with the modern-day equivalent of a station wagon: a Chevy HHR in a sparkly royal blue. We promptly named it Fred.

How did we end up with an HHR? We thought about buying a second Civic hybrid or even buying a new Toyota Prius. But with our family of 8 (two humans, five dogs and a confused cat) and seemingly endless home renovations, we decided that we needed more space than either of those cars would provide.

And of the station wagon type vehicles, the HHR does fairly well. Twenty eight average city and 32 average highway. This car is unlikely to spend much time in a city so I’m thinking that our mileage will be much closer – and hopefully higher – than the 32 average.

I would have liked to do better mileage and emissions wise, but doubling what we were getting isn’t bad. And we’re going to do our darndest to keep this car in good shape so that if there is a technological breakthrough, we’ll be able to trade it in and perhaps double the mileage again.

As for the Explorer, it is on its way to be shredded or compacted. We did end up getting $4,500 from the government plus another $165 as compensation for the money the dealership is likely to make on selling some of the recyclable pieces of the Explorer.

I’ve never enjoyed the process of buying a car; this year it seemed even worse. The information on fuel rankings and global warming pollution is confusing and hard to find. American manufacturers still lag way behind what’s possible; foreign-made cars often seemed shoddy or, alternatively, way too luxurious and pricey.

Even the clunker program – which, for us, did lead to a bonus of $3,500 off our car because the Ford was only worth about $1,000 in trade in – led to grumpiness at the dealership. (Apparently there were 16 pages of forms that needed to be filled out for each clunker.)

But it is over for now. Since I am, at heart, an optimist, I have confidence that the next time will be easier to do the right thing. Even with the compromises we had to make, I can’t let myself forget that we did make progress. Slow progress, yes, but progress nonetheless.