The Cool House: cars
Showing posts with label cars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cars. Show all posts

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Red and Gold*

Gorgeous red peony in my neighbor's yard (mine are smaller, later, pink and white). Ruby coloured crimped petals with a garland of gold - perfectly understated elegance.
Speaking of which this is most definitely not!

*OR: The Peony and the PCV

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Benz Bling


A Mercedes-Benz SL600 encrusted with 300,000 Swarovski crystals at the Tokyo Salon auto show.
This is just so wrong. Damn crystals are showing up everywhere.

Friday, August 08, 2008

Vacation: not quite as planned

Monday was the start of a week long vacation. We packed in a fair amount and we had a list of things we wanted to do during the other five days. How do you think we did?
Well the rest of the vacation went something like this....
Tuesday: We're told the car has been repaired and we need to take to the auto body shop the cheque the insurance company sent us four weeks ago. Four weeks proves to be a long time to keep a cheque in a safe place. Too long. The search begins. Six and a half hours later we have missed our day-trip to Montauk but The Guy has a super-tidy office. Alas we do not have the cheque. We declare it lost and the insurance company agrees to issue a new cheque at the drive-in window of their offices (conveniently located half-way between The Cool House and the auto repair place.
Wednesday: The plan is to drive to insurance co. pick up cheque, drive to body shop and get car, then take loaner car back. Should take a couple of hours, giving us the rest of the day to do something exciting. We drive to get cheque, drive-in window actually a walk-in office. There are no free parking spaces. I wait in car, ready to move it if necessary while The Guy runs in to get cheque. He is gone 35 minutes. Cheque wasn't ready. Drive to car repair place. Car out on final road test. Should take 15 minutes. Car comes back. There are two problems: the registration ran out and the car needs a service before we can drive it. The first proves to be their error. Car is registered, they put the sticker on upside down when fixing the windshield. This is easily remedied but car has to go to the shop to be serviced. A different shop. In a different town. The Guy will drive there in our car and I will follow in loaner in case he breaks down. I leave The Guy to see to car service and come home. Many hours later he returns and we take back loaner car. Actual time taken: 6 hours.
Thursday: It started well enough but then there was this. The storms continued late into the evening. Another neighbor had the bark stripped off a maple tree by the lightning and there are branches down in lots of places but the Village is still preoccupied with the house fire.
I've had better vacations but at least I wasn't out on the water when this happened.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Avanti


What did The Guy do while I was enthusing over the gardens on our mini-vacation? He did what guys are supposed to and admired this 1964 Avanti that is mid-way through its restoration. This is the same model that Alice Cooper once owned that was recently for sale on ebay.


The Studebaker Avanti was designed by Raymond Loewy in 1961 and despite the demise of Studebaker it remains in production today. But it's those early futuristic sports cars that capture the imagination and have enthusiasts forming owners' clubs and spending thousands to bring them back to their original state. And, of course, have grown men drooling over them in the streets.

Friday, June 13, 2008

Totaled or Totally Repairable?

Turns out the car might not be totaled after all. On the twelfth day after the accident, 10 days after we had been notified that an assessor had been appointed and six days after the dealer had told us to pick up the plates because it was a write-off I got a call from a very determined assessor who hoped we hadn't bought a new car yet because as far as he could see it just needed two new doors.
The car is apparently at an unsecured car auction place somewhere in the Tri-state area and he needed our permission to tow it to a "very good car shop in Medford" which they "use all the time" so someone could make sure that's all it needed.
Hmm, I didn't used to be a suspicious gal (OK, that's a big, fat lie. I'm cynical by birthright and inclination.) but something changed over the past few years. Maybe it's the way the Administration plays fast and loose with the Constitution; maybe it's the lack of a democratic process in Albany or maybe it's just a reaction to that damn insurance bill but something doesn't seem quite right. It's a lease car and I'm not named on the lease so I couldn't help him and The Guy is in meetings in another part of the country and couldn't be reached but the assessor insisted he should call him back "any hour of the day or night".
Really? If you can be reached any hour of the day or night, shouldn't you have gone out to see the car before it was released by the dealer's shop? Just saying. Oh, and am I the only person who when faced by the "I've been doing this job for thirty years" comment wants to yell back: You should have got the hang of it by now OR You're only as good as your last job OR Tell it to Obama!

Friday, June 06, 2008

So glad to be alive

We got hit by a truck last weekend.
OK, breathe. We're still here; the car, however, is totaled. We were lucky to have side impact bags and a car with enough steel to stop the hook on the front of the truck coming through the driver's door. If it had been my Jeep or the "caprice" I don't think I'd be writing this. We were actually dragged by the wingnuts on the front wheel of the truck. The impact buckled the frame and smashed the glass and cracked the windshield. We were doing maybe 5mph. We are very lucky.
There are no photos because I really didn't think of it until afterwards. A long time afterwards, after the police report had been taken, the EMS had left and the car had been towed.
I've never understood the benefit of those automatic emergency service phones in cars before but the second the airbag went off a voice was asking if we were alright and they phoned the Police and alerted a tow truck. They stayed on the line to speak to the Police and I didn't realise they were still on the line until half an hour or so later when they interrupted us to give us the ETA of the tow truck.
By the way, the accident happened right outside the drive, and the sound of the impact had neighbors running. Guess who arrived first? An attorney, an insurance agent and an off-duty police officer. The perfect trifecta.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Fortunatissimo, family car

The new Karbon Articulating Kitchen faucet from Kohler featured in today's New York Times reminds me of something. I can't quite think of what.... oh, yes.......

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Smart Car comes to NY


I was driving through Huntington on Sunday when I saw my first American Smart car. The Smart fortwo (which I once read as Fort Wo until it dawned on me it was For Two. Yes I can be a little slow sometimes!) is available in three models, the Pure, the Passion, and the Passion Cabriolet, starting at $11,590. Billed as the answer to inner-city parking problems and rising fuel prices, I knew they were coming - we have two dealerships in the area so I'd seen the cute little dinky toys on the garage forecourts - but up until now I hadn't seen one on the road.
I have to say they look incongruous here. Maybe it's because the roads are so much wider than in Europe, or there are so many more SUVs and minivans, or the trucks are so huge but that Smartcar looked like a golf caddy that took a wrong turn at the 18th hole and found itself out on the highway.
Speaking of highways, I wouldn't take a Smartcar on an American interstate any more than I'd take a bicycle. Those bigger cars just wouldn't see you, not while the drivers are busy drinking coffee, applying make-up or reading the paper, which is what goes on here. A lot. I know this because we used to have have one of these and lots of just didn't see us.


I looked at buying a Smartcar when they were launched in Europe about 10 years ago. The local dealership was just up the road from my house and I was intrigued by the various models featured in the glass tower visible from the autoroute.


In the end though, the hype didn't measure up to reality. I couldn't park the thing any easier than I could the car I ended up buying, a Renault Twingo. The Twingo was also cheaper, had a similar gas mileage and was much roomier inside. (It was more a forfour than a fortwo) I also think it was better designed, resembling a cute baby carriage inside but a real car on the outside. The Smartcar? Stick a pole on it's back and it looks just like a fairground bumper car. But the Twingo isn't available here and the Smart fortwo is, so look for them on a street near you in the coming months.

Monday, August 20, 2007

Beach car


Just to prove that our trials aren't limited to things going wrong with the house, my Jeep decided to choose to today to test me, too.

It's rainy and coldish and I have to run to the vet with the kittens tomorrow so I decided to put the soft top back on and zip in the windows. I think that was my mistake. When I'd washed the grime off my hands and filed down the nails I broke struggling with the zippers I tried to start the car and it hiccoughed twice, beeped and flashed the interior light forlornly. Then, nothing.

Luckily we have AAA and more luckily it only took twenty minutes for the guy to turn up and even more luckily I was watching for him and saw him driving into the front drive so I was able to sprint across the lawn before he drove off, unable to locate a black Jeep on the property. This has happened before, even when I explained there are two driveways, one to the garages and one to the front door. It pays to keep your running shoes on so you can chase them up the road waving and yelling like a crazy person and direct them to the right entrance. As I was on my way to the gym when the saga started I was dressed appropriately.

The guy gave me a jump start and left me to reverse the car out of the garage so I could charge up the battery. I got two feet back before the car died and I had to leap out of the car and chase the guy down the road, waving and yelling like a crazy person. To cut a long story short, the battery was dead and I spent this afternoon waiting for a replacement because they don't keep that type of spare battery on the truck.

I swear the Jeep only did this because it's a beach car, happiest with its top down and doors off. It didn't like being smothered in its rain gear. Either that or there is a conspiracy to drive me nuts and the house and the car are in it together.