Thursday,
April 4, 2002

Come to me, my dream of love

It's little. It's yellow. It's good.

It will be mine if I win the lottery on Saturday, too.

Yes. I finally test drove one of the new Beetles. A Double Yellow Beetle GLS 1.8t with manual transmission, to be precise. This is what happens when you carpool with someone who drives a Passat and wants to test drive the Jetta TDI station wagon. While he's considering the relative merits of the Jetta, you're innocently over by the Beetles, drooling over them and wishing you had a three-car garage and an unexpected gift of $21,000 from a rich uncle, when the salesman blindsides you with an offer of a test drive.

Well, I mean, it would have been rude to say no, right?

Oh, my. I repeat that -- oh, my. The gas mileage is for shit, compared to my Corolla, but the Beetle handles like a dream and has this wonderfully punchy engine that pops it down the road like nobody's business. You also feel like you're wearing the car more than just driving it, which is an incredibly cool sensation.

The Man from McKinney is an enabler, he truly is. He kept saying things like, "Well, yeah, the gas mileage isn't anything like the Corolla, but it's still better than all those SUVs," and "the Beetle has the best crash results of all cars on the market, you know, whereas your Corolla is a death trap."

But. But. The Corolla is barely a year old, and quite frankly I can't bridge the logic gap from "I have a one-year-old car in great condition" to "I really need a new Beetle. In yellow." Damn my frugal brain!

Oh, well. Another thing to add to the wish list.