Monthly Archives: January 2004

I’ve had a string of calls from Crazy Uncle John today, all related in one way or another to the Neon I just sold him. Normally to have a day like this you have to be Norman Wisdom or Jim Carey. Or, as it turns out, just being Crazy Uncle John will do.

First call he made was regarding the car battery being flat and that he couldn’t figure how to open the hood in order to get to it. Despite a warning chime sounding if you so much as think about leaving the car with the lights on, Crazy Uncle John had managed to leave them on all night and the battery was as dead as a doornail. After explaining where the release mechanism was, he went off to sort it and all was well for a while.

I decided to call him back later on, just to see if he had it all sorted. He was in the process of pushing the car along the road so that he was far enough away from home so that the RAC would come out to him. I left him to it, but I pictured the scene in my head and it seemed kind of funny.

A while after this he calls back having managed to get the car started, but rolling over a nail somewhere along the line had given him a puncture and he had to pay a substantial amount to replace the tyre. I agreed that this was bad luck, but was glad he had the car started again.

All goes quiet for an hour or so before I get a call asking where the remote release is for the trunk. I tell him it’s in the glove compartment, he thanks me and hangs up. It’s less than sixty seconds before he calls again.

I have no idea how, and neither does he at this point in time, but somehow he has locked himself out of the car with only the trunk being open. Better still, the keys are in the ignition and the engine is running. If it wasn’t for the tone of his voice I would think he was taking the piss with this latest revelation.

After much anticpation, I picked up the new car tonight from the Honda garage. The hand-over process was more thorough compared to the one at the Chrysler place when I got the Neon. Not that that’s a bad thing, it’s just that with the Neon the guy spent more time actually outside introducing me to the car, whereas with Honda there was none of that and more of an explanation of the pre-delivery inspection and other stuff.

Since my salesperson, Natasha, wasn’t available I was dealt with by this really cool scottish guy called Mark. We had a bit of a banter, as we call it north of the border, making the whole experience very pleasant. Comedy moments ensued when he had to give me a bunch of flowers(!) as part of the hand-over of my car. Not sure why, must be company policy or something, but the general manager thought it was pretty funny and there was some gag thrown about that this was what two scottish men did when they met for the first time!

As for the car, well, it’s ace – lots of cool little features that clever Japanese designers have put everywhere. It’s very different to drive compared to the Neon – it feels so much lighter and the suspension is definately firmer too.

My only complaint so far is that the stereo speakers seem pretty weak. There’s no bass, no thumpity thump, just mid to high range, really. I looked for one of those obligatory buttons you tend to get on Japanese stereos – you know, the kind you have to keep pressed in all the time or it just sounds like shit – but there doesn’t appear to be an obvious “bass-boost” button on there. I’ll need to have another flick through the manual to see if there is a way of giving the sound some substance, though, as we got kind of spoiled with the cracking sound system in the Neon.

Tonight we took it out for a spin up the motorway – watching the odometer climb into the teens as we sped along the dual carriageways out past the airport. Tomorrow will be our first proper commute in traffic, though, so it’ll be interesting to see how it differs from the larger Neon.