Auto-blog II -- My New Focus

I notice with some amusement that my colleague from Portland OR, Marilyn Sewell, is also blogging about her new car, after her faithful old Honda was first stolen out of her driveway, and then missing for a month (during which time she replaced it with a used Volvo), only to later have the Honda recovered by the police. By that time, of course, the Honda had been stripped of anything valuable (which did not, apparently, include her CDs), and Marilyn had fallen head over heels in love with her new Swedish ride anyway, so the Japanese import was released into the custody of the Insurance company, who will no doubt find it a good home.

My story isn't nearly so dramatic as Marilyn's. Having made the decision to replace my 10-year-old Ranger pick-up with a smaller, more fuel-efficient and city-friendly (i.e. easy to park) vehicle, rather than paying $2500 to have the four-wheel-drive repaired and the rest of the vehicle brought up to where it would pass inspection, I basically only considered three options: the Escape Hybrid (because someone told me that I ought to buy a hybrid), the Subaru Outback wagon (which is a very popular car in my neighborhood, and also I've noticed among Unitarian ministers in general), and the Focus (which is the model Ford created to replace the Escort, and, as you have no doubt already inferred from the title, is the vehicle I eventually bought).

I'm not really certain how I became such a loyal Ford customer, but since this is my third one in a row now (and I've basicly driven nothing else for 15 years) I guess I qualify. Bought the original Escort wagon in part because we realized that we could buy two Escorts for the price of one Outback; and the fact that I drove it for nearly a quarter of a million miles before it finally gave up the ghost (in protest, I think, over having to leave its home in the Pacific Northwest) certainly did a lot to cement my loyalty to the product. The Ranger was not such a bad ride either, and my appreciation for that vehicle was reinforced early on by the fact that the only car dealership on Nantucket sold and serviced Fords, which pretty much gave them a Mircosoft-like competitive advantage when it came to selling to and servicing Island residents.

When I eventually moved back to "America," to an affluent little faux-rural New England town just over the river and through the woods from Walden Pond, my dirty, dented, decade-old pick-up made a nice contrast to the Escapes, Priuses, Saubs, Subarus, and BMWs I generally saw all around me...not to mention all the various SUVs and Mini-vans (of every make and model) and more Hummers per captia than anywhere else in the Commonwealth (although none, I don't think, were owned my members of the congregation). And since it was a fifteen minute drive in any direction just to get gas or groceries, I ended up spending a lot more time in that car than I would have chosen to otherwise.

But here in Portland ME it's a very different landscape. Although I live a half-mile from church (as opposed to only 40 yards in Carlisle, and maybe 40 feet on Nantucket), just about everything I could ever want or need is within easy walking distance of my apartment, and public transportation is readily available. Still, as a minister, I feel compelled to keep a car in the city, even though on some levels at least I would be delighted not to have to. My Aunt in Seattle has lived without a car in that city ever since she returned from the Peace Corps in the mid-1960's -- 40 years during which she has also traveled all over the world (including India and Pakistan, South America, and widely in Europe and Africa)using only public transportation, a bicycle, and her own two feet. She doesn't even like to RIDE in cars if she can avoid it. And I admire her independence in doing so.

But it's different being a minister. Even when gasoline and rubber were being strictly rationed during the Second World War, clergy and physicians received priority status, since society recognized that they needed those resources in order to accomplish their jobs. Nowadays MDs rarely make housecalls, the status of ministers is somewhat less exhalted, and if anything our society is more car-dependent than ever. But the importance of "auto-mobility" to the work of ministry is essentially unchanged; we travel at odd and unpredictable hours, are often needed in a hurry, even more often need to be two places at the same time, and are even at times required to provide transportation for others who cannot transport themselves.

Yet at the same time, the style of automobile a minister selects suggests an awful lot about their theology, and needs to be undertaken with great discernment. If I'm going to be making my parish visits in a Mercedes, a BMW, or a Porsche...it had better be AT LEAST a decade old, and preferably a vehicle that actually belongs to (or perhaps was bought by and handed down from) my extremely successful attorney/physician/corporate executive partner. Foreign compacts (like the Subaru or Marilyn's Honda) are generally good, while American cars (it seems to me, at least) are a little more of a mixed bag -- it's nice to buy domestic and support the jobs of unionized American Auto Workers, but is what's good for General Motors REALLY what's good for the country anymore?

Likewise, my heart may long for a little red convertible, but my brain tells me I'm a lot better off picking a sensible blue or green or white or gray sedan or compact wagon. Or maybe a small SUV or Mini-van...expecially if I have young children in the household. And if I REALLY want to make a statement, then I'll get a hybrid...assuming I can afford it. But God forbid that I should ever find myself behind the wheel of a Hummer...unless I'm accompanying a National Guard unit to the location of a natural disaster.

And so it came to pass that armed with this set of sensibilities, I set out in search of a new car to replace the Ranger. Ruled out the Hybrid Escape on grounds of cost, as well as the realization that both the Subaru and the Focus got just as good gas mileage with conventional technology. Flirted with the Subaru...and if I'd been willing to make the effort I probably could have found a good, low-mileage used Subaru wagon for only a few thousand more than I ended up paying for my Ford. But people who own these wagons tend to like them so well that they hold on to them for a long time, and besides, the Ford dealership is a lot closer to my home, and I already had a good relationship with them based on the work they'd already done on my truck. So that's where I started, and that's where I ended up...mostly because I didn't want to have to put any more time into this entire process than I absolutely had to anyway.

So I zeroed in on a Focus, and then began the even more complicated process of finding MY particular Focus out of all the possible Foci (or maybe in this case, it really is "Focuses") potentially available to me. And the reason this turned out to be more complicated than I'd thought is because I made it so. My first thought was that I would go with some sort of used "program" car -- a former rental a year or two old, which can generally be picked up for about two-thirds the price of a comparable new car. But those cars all come with automatic transmissions, and I'd decided that I really did want a standard five speed manual shift again, as well as cruise control if I could get it (since I'd also enjoyed that option on my previous two Fords, and have grown rather accustomed to it). And then (and this really was my one true concession to having turned fifty) I really wanted to have a moonroof if they could find one, just so I could still potentially open up the top and feel the wind blow through what's left of my hair on a sunny summer day once in awhile. But to compensate for that indulgence, I also insisted that there be no spoilers or flashy trim, and that the car could be any color but red.

The bad news was that there was only one vehicle with that particular configuration of equipment anywhere in New England. The good news was that it belonged to the dealership only five miles across town. Then we learned that it wouldn't arrive on the lot for another week. Then came the blizzard, which delayed things even more. By this time I was already starting to rethink my decision about buying a new car at all -- $2500 bucks to keep the Ranger on the road through another winter was looking like a pretty good idea after all. But my dad, bless his heart, came through with some very sensible fatherly advice: you tend to keep these cars a long time Tim, (he told me), and you can afford to buy the car you want -- so bite the bullet, spend the money, get the car and ENJOY IT! for a long, long time.

So that's what I did. Even so, after fifteen years without a car payment, the sticker shock was pretty intense. Doubled the cost of my insurance, and the state excise tax alone is a dollar a day. Add in the payments and the cost of off-street parking, and I'm into this alligator nearly five hundred dollars a month before I've bought a single drop of three dollar a gallon gasoline. All told, I'm estimating that the "privilege" of owning and operating my own vehicle is going to cost me about 12% of my annual gross income. Thats a helluva lot of cab rides, frankly. And if I lived in a community where flex-cars were available, I think I'd be looking awfully hard at signing up.

But then there's the clergy thing. Suburban nursing homes, evening potlucks and circle suppers, hospital visits, ministers meetings...a car may not be an absolute necessity, but it sure does make things easier and more convenient. Although let's not forget the greatest irony of all. Now that I've actually purchased this beautiful new car, I'm afraid to drive it in the snow...and so mostly I try to leave it parked in the garage, and walk everywhere I can anyway. So we'll see. Maybe by this time next year, somebody out there will get a great deal on a low-mileage, high MPG standard shift, cruise-control equipped Clerical Black Ford Focus sedan with a moonroof. Or maybe by then I will have simply gotten over all this automobile angst, and will be loving my new ride....