Zoom zoom

After a week of working at it, I've finally got a new car. The process was relatively painless, the one fly in the ointment being that the first salesman who ran out the door and grabbed on to my leg when I paid my first visit to the dealership was green as a tomato worm. He had only been selling cars for a few weeks, didn't really have a lot of answers to my lengthy list of questions, and ultimately cost me a couple wasted trips to the dealership. Things went more smoothly once The Hoary Veteran (a very pleasant fellow whose real name was Bruce) took me in tow when I visited during one of The New Guy's days off. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

My New World

Part of the challenge, as it was explained to me, is that Mazda has decreased the dealers' allocations of 5-doors (or compact wagon, as I've also seen it) for the 2007 model year. There I was, standing in the showroom with my checkbook in tow (I even brought my own pen!), and the sales staff were having trouble coming up with more than one to show me.

"Well, we have this black one," The New Guy told me. "It's pretty sharp, huh?"

"It's good enough for a test drive, and it does look sharp," I agreed. "But the only black car I've ever owned as a Texas resident is the one I owned when I moved here from out of state. Never again."

The New Guy gave me a look utterly devoid of comprehension.

"You know, because black is so hot," I said, attempting to bring him along.

"Definitely," he said, nodding and flashing a grin that went just beyond conspiratorial but didn't quite reach lascivious. "Black is very hot."

I suspected we weren't on the same wavelength, so I cut to the chase.

"I will not be buying a black car."

With that settled, we set about checking inventory to see what was available, only to discover that all the other Mazda 3 hatchbacks had manual transmissions. After 10 years of daily commutes in the beep-and-creepy Dallas traffic, one of my primary reasons for buying a new car was to get my left foot off the clutch. Those lovely creatures with their 5-speed manual transmissions and sporting a variety of lovely paint schemes were dead to me.

To shorten the story a bit, I ended up working with Bruce and Eric The Acquirer to find me a car. They were expecting delivery of a gray one (along with Phantom Blue and Aurora Blue, one of my three preferred colors) in a couple weeks but would also do a search to see if they could get one sooner from another dealer. The next day, I got a phone call from Turtle saying that The New Guy had called to say that they'd found one, that it would be driven in the next day, and what time would I like to come in to take delivery. I called back and asked if 10am would be good, and he said it would be just great.

At 10am yesterday, I showed up at the dealership to find that not only would the car not arrive for another three hours, but it was The New Guy's day off. Bruce and Eric were as mystified as they were apologetic. Since I was already there, I sat down with Bruce and worked out a few details regarding my trade in before heading home to wait and fall asleep in front of some really lame horror movie starring the post-car accident Mark Hamill.

Cutting further to the chase, at 6pm I drove off the lot. Still fumbling to figure out where all the light switches were and how to work them, I pulled on to the highway and immediately found myself in the midst of a traffic jam.

Ahhh, I thought. The blessed relief of an automatic transmission.

It figures that the day after I buy a new car, Texas can't spare me a little sunshine for pictures. But it's gray, after all, so call it a theme.