iMatt :: The Blog of Matt Clare

My old 2001 Acura EL had a list of problems that were only getting worse and had to do with its 236,500 km plus age. So it was time to upgrade!

My wife Lindsay and I had three cars on our list, all used cars in that 3 to 4 year old or 40,000 km to 70,000 km range that generally defines the off-lease market — and they all needed to have a helping of sportiness and quirkiness.

All manual, all with a high level of trim.

The cars on our list were:

1. The Mazda 3 Sport (wagon), as a sporty car with good use of space.
2. SAAB 9-3, as it represented a bit of bargon given the companies current predicament. I even wrote into the AutoBlog podcast about my idea. It’s the very last thing they talk about at 1 hour, 28 minutes – they read the year wrong, but they don’t like the Saab manual either)
3. Acura CSX, the Canada-only Super Civic that replace my EL in the lineup
4. … maybe a compelling Honda Civic, Fit, or a Suburu could have squeezed in there, but probably not.

I consider buying a used car “family policy”, as I don’t want to pay for that initial depreciation, but I do want all of that high cost kit. I’m quite willing to diagnose the faults off a range of used cars from across Ontario and ride around like the Princess and the Pea on test drives until I find the perfect car.

Lindsay, not so much. In the end that just meant I could look at even more cars!

I settled on a 2007 Acura CSX, black with black tint, a 5spd manual and the 2.0 VTEC 155 hp engine. No leather this time (Lindsay’s happier, I’m not so much, but warming to not having leather).

I like the car a lot, but even though I have an AUX (headphone jack) input on the new CSX, I really do miss the after-market adaptor my old EL had to let me control the iPod (iPhone) from the regular car stereo.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 5th, 2010 at 16:40 and is filed under cars, self-promotion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.