Motor Morons’ Motoring Weekend

No, I didn’t go watch the rugby or the wake­board­ing this week­end, because every time I looked out the win­dow, it looked like it was gonna rain chubby rain.

What I did instead was a spot of retail ther­apy with a friend who’s look­ing to buy a car. Because this was the first time either of us were look­ing at show­room cars (as opposed to car­yard ones), we were very excited. We col­lected half a dozen brochures before we mus­tered enough courage to ask for a test drive. Yes, me and my friend are what you would call Motor Morons.

Very tir­ing week­end, but here’s our Motor Moron Motor Review:

Chevro­let Aveo:

Not a good feel at all. Hor­ri­ble inte­rior with plas­tic trim­mings that look like Air­fix parts. (In fact, the drinks-holder fell apart because the air­fix glue never glue prop­erly). The doors were tinny-sounding when you closed them.

Two thumbs down.

Mit­subishi Lancer:

Looked pretty alright from the out­side, though a bit ‘Beng/Lian’. The inside was a bit out­dated, with the instru­ment clus­ter look­ing like some­thing from the early 90s. The ride was pretty smooth, and we didn’t bang any­thing or what, even if it was our first time dri­ving it. We even went into a road hump pretty hard, and the car still stayed together like a dream. Not a peep from the sales­man either.

In the lobby of the show­room was a ‘Ral­liart’ ver­sion of the Lancer. My brother (who’s not a Motor Moron, but likes to make fun of Motor Morons) says I should get it, so I look like I have a sports car, though it won’t drive like one. Appar­ently there’s some­thing called the Evil Eight or some­thing ver­sion of the Lancer that the Bengs and their molls can’t get enough of. Now, that’s a sports car, says my brother.

My brother also says Mit­subishi is com­ing up with a ‘new shape’ for the Lancer, so don’t buy a Lancer now.

But the Lancer comes with a Sony or Ken­wood car stereo that plays MP3 discs leh.

One thumb up, one thumb down.

Toy­ota Vios:

We didn’t get to test drive this car because the show­room was chock­ers with peo­ple look­ing to buy cars, and the sales­man said ‘How to test drive, see how crowded it is?’. Minus 20,000 points. But the Vios is pretty neat, with the instru­ment clus­ter in the mid­dle of the dash­board, tilted towards the dri­ver so the dri­ver can still see how fast he or she is going. But there’s still too much of that fake wood veneer pan­elling thing going on, and that makes it look a lit­tle dated. The doors shut pretty nicely though.

One thumb up, one thumb down (for impa­tient salesman).

Mazda 3:

We already liked the look of the Mazda 3, and we were attended to by a woman called Rosie, and she could tell at once that we were Motor Morons. (There was that glint in her eye while we had that glaze in ours). Rosie was pretty good at con­vinc­ing us that the Mazda 3 was the best car in its class, even if it was $10-15K more expen­sive than other com­pact sedans. It was pretty crowded at the show­room too, but Rosie man­aged to get us a yel­low Mazda 3 to play around with.

The ride was pretty good, and we weren’t at all dis­tracted by Rosie talk­ing non-stop while we nego­ti­ated the week­end after­noon traf­fic. The car’s inte­rior is very stylo-mylo, and it has one of those nifty steer­ing wheel con­trolled stereo systems.

And when we were done with our test drive, we closed the doors and there was a very sat­is­fy­ing ‘clump’ sound as they shut. Mmmm. Not tinny.

Rosie car­ried on talk­ing about which model we should buy, as if we were already set on buy­ing one.

‘Don’t buy the RS! What for? Sports pack­age make the car very heavy! $5,000 more to make the car drink more petrol! No point lah!’, she said.

Two thumbs up.

Next week: Test dri­ving cars I can­not afford.