Shopping for the Featureless Car

Featureless, perhaps is not the best word to describe the kind of automobile Jim and I were looking for. Perhaps basic transportation is more appropriate.

We wanted a car without bells and whistles. One with standard manual transmission. You know, those old ones you shift yourself. The kind we grew up with.

The type of car we wanted should have hand cranked or roll up windows because we are convinced that someday we might drive into a lake and be unable to open power-assisted windows to escape. Never mind that I don't swim.

It should get terrific mileage and be capable of living on the streets of NYC. It shouldn't look fancy. It shouldn’t be desirable to anyone but us.

This is not a popular kind of car.

Our sweet old Mazda Protégé 2002 fit the bill. It had roll up windows and the ignition worked with a key. You had to manually lock and unlock the doors. Our grandsons thought all this was hilarious.  Friends said things like “I didn’t know they still made cars like this.” They helplessly waited for us to lock and unlock the doors.

The CD player was a newfangled contraption to us when we bought the Protégé thirteen years ago. We weren’t too happy about it because it replaced a tape player and left us with lots of nice tapes we could no longer listen to in the car.

The Mazda didn't talk back, something Jim particularly liked. No GPS for Jim, the human compass, who remembers directions and seems to know where he is at all times. Not an ability I share. I kept atlases in the glove compartment and drove around a lot until I saw a major department store. Then I knew where I was.

The rear window was wiper barren.

It was a good car.  It didn't need a major repair outside normal maintenance in the all its 13 years. It stood by us through long trips and traversing the Cross Bronx on a daily basis. We took care of it and it took care of us.

Sometime over the years we started calling it Car.

But at 140,000 miles, and a lot of dents and scrapes, it was time to say good-bye and shop for a new basic car.

We thought that environmentally speaking we should go for a Prius, but wow - talk about bells and whistles. Forget it.

Two sub-compacts, the Honda Fit and the Mazda 2 seemed closer to filling our requirements.

Everyone loves a Fit they say. And we were quite pleased with how our Mazda had performed.

So we headed north to a Westchester Mazda dealer to be told that absolutely no one wanted a Mazda 2. It was too basic. It was withdrawn from the American market and sent back to Europe where it belongs.

We looked at a Mazda 3, the Protégé’s replacement model.  Although it was bigger, fancier and more expensive it had a lot of appeal until we learned that it no longer had a CD player. CD players are passé. Now that we have built up a new collection of music on CDs they tell us the Mp3 player is taking over.

We would actually have had to buy a fancier model to get the downgrade to a CD.

We looked at the Honda Fit, but the salesman’s face turned from warm to cold when we mentioned manual transmission. “That will be hard to find. They just aren’t out there. No one wants one,” he repeated a few times.

Finally we went to the Nissan dealer who had the least fancy car on the market: the Nissan Versa Note. Real hand cranked windows, no extra windshield wiper, and it even used a real key to open the doors.  No power anything. And a CD player came with it. It was cheap too. You could sort of fit four people in it. Our Mazda accommodated five.

You would think we would have jumped at this opportunity to practice what we preach. But we went home and did some research and found that Consumer Reports wasn’t impressed by the Note’s performance on the road and Car and Driver mentioned that the wheels failed to grip the road.  Plus it had the tiniest trunk I have ever seen outside a Fiat 500.

I, not so secretly, yearned for one of those cute little things. The Fiat 500 is all about adorable. But small, very small, as in miniscule.  I love the commercials for the slightly larger Fiat 800 that comes equipped with an Italian family to teach you how to be Italian. But we couldn’t afford the espresso bills.

So it looked like we were going to have to pay more to get less. Basic is just not popular. Big, strong, safe, easy and fun are what is wanted, which pretty much translates into an SUV. Or something sleek and expensive.

I suggested we forget our values and go for a flashy Mazda Miata roadster. Hunter green with tan interior. Would need a garage though. Even in today’s almost crime free NYC you can’t park a sports car on the street and expect it to survive. And no room for anybody but us. Where would our daughter and her dog fit?

Which brings us back to the Fit. And Queens. We found a plain Fit at a Honda dealer in Queens. Seems basic is OK in Queens. They had at least four basic models on the lot to choose from, all of them with standard transmission.

The one we chose is nice. Gray. CD player. Decent size trunk. No GPS. I have my smart phone now anyway.

We will just have to get used to the power windows and try to stay away from large bodies of water.

It’s small but not too small. In fact the salesman, who was at least 6’4”, fit into the back seat with Jim and me. Pretty much.

It’s parked on the street right now. Another gray vehicle among all the other gray vehicles.

Jim wants to name it Car Junior. Want a ride?