S550: It's The Little Things - Center Console Dual-Swing Lid

The center console lid opens from either side! Not sure if any other car makers have this, but it's the first time I've seen it, and it continues to delight me. I still don't understand how it's done, but I still am amazed this isn't standard for every center console out there. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

One More Time: My 911 Turbo Auctioned Yet Again

Image
Well, it seems like every few years, my old Porsche 911 Turbo, the one that started my whole "interesting depreciated cars" adventure, gets resold on the car auction site, Bring a Trailer (BaT). And here we are again . When I sold it there back in 2016, it was the first 911 Turbo from the 996-era (2001-05) Turbo that had ever been listed for sale on Bring A Trailer (at least, that's what they told me at the time, tho it looks like a red one may have beat mine by a couple weeks). Since then, there have been lots and lots  sold on BaT.  I bought this car in 2014 for $38k with 50k miles on it, sold it in 2016 on BaT for $45k, and then watched it be sold again in 2020 for $42.5k, and then for $64k in 2022 .  But it seems like the appreciation bubble may have burst. Today, in 2024, after 9 owners and 71,000 miles (which means that it has only put on 21,000 miles in the past 10 years!), the auction bidding reached $54,000 but did not meet the seller's reserve price. I...
Read more

Five Year Miataversary

Image
  Five years, fifteen thousand miles. Time flies.  The car remains a joy to drive. As I anticipated when I bought it , I don't miss the extra horsepower you get in the 2019 and onward model years (aka ND2). That extra power is reportedly mostly at the top of the rev band, an area where I don't spend much time. The joy in this car, for me, is less about going fast than about the ways it engages you in the act of driving.  Cost of ownership? Here's the math:  Maintenance = $1,057 (basically oil changes, plus an engine air filter and transmission oil change) Depreciation = $500 (yes, Kelly Blue Book says I can basically get what I paid for it!) This makes the Miata by far the cheapest car to own that I've had, beating out my 2010 Honda Fit . Most of this is down the the crazy high post-pandemic used car prices holding depreciation in check. But that doesn't diminish the joys of simple reliability, which not all newer cars can provide.  Here's to the next 5 years!...
Read more

Four Hour Drive: 2021 Volvo XC40 Recharge

Image
  I borrowed a 2021 Volvo XC40 Recharge for a few hours (thanks Rob!), which I used to drive from San Francisco to Sonoma and back. Overall, I really liked it -- comfortable, easy to drive, excellent audio system, and plenty of power (perhaps too much, see below). It also has the advantage of actually fitting in our garage (made possible by power folding wing mirrors), which is something that neither the Tesla Model Y nor the Ford Mach-e can say.  Here are some impressions, in no particular order:  It feels like a regular car.  Some EVs (see, e.g., Tesla) seem committed to making the EV experience feel very different from regular ICE cars, leaning into huge screens and new interface conventions. This Volvo is not like that. It all feels very familiar. There's a screen, but there's also the familiar window buttons, steering wheel buttons (real buttons, not touch/swipe, thank god), buttons for defrost. Nor have they departed from familiar digital dash cluster design (s...
Read more