[New Car Love Alert…]

So I’m out of the break-in period, and taking the car a little more and more into its upper ranges.  Bear in mind that for years, decades, I’ve been a stick driver and absolutely hated automatics.  Also, that I’ve never owned a car with anything under the hood that could even remotely be called a high performance engine.

• I’ve finally encountered the issue people are complaining about out there, with the new seven speed automatic down shifting too aggressively.  But I’ve been taking Traveler slowly up and down the speedometer and tach and learning how it behaves and I think I know what the problem is.  Most American drivers, especially drivers of my generation, learned on automatics that made you stomp down on the accelerator in order to down shift.  You do that in this car and it will behave like it thinks you’re doing some kind of emergency maneuver and race down the gears when that’s not what you want.  In this car, in normal driving, when you just want to rapidly pass someone or accelerate out of a situation, you don’t stomp down on the gas pedal.  You have to back off your old habits a tad, learn to just firmly press the accelerator forward.  The car will figure out what you want and down shift in a more normal manner.  And then…trust me…that speedometer needle will climb like you won’t believe.  The car won’t slam you back in your seat…it’s a luxury sedan not a Lamborghini…but the effect of the smooth urgency with which it takes you into loose-your-license territory is…amazing.  At least to me.  I guess that’s what high compression, plus variable valve timing does.  Which is why it only drinks expensive premium gas.  I’ve driven big V-8s that had less authority then this six.  But they were 1970s V-8s.  I can’t imagine what the engines Mercedes puts in its S class cars nowadays must feel like.  Anyway…the transmission will behave itself, but you need a calm foot on the pedal.  You don’t stomp the pedal down.  Just ask it politely.  It’ll deliver.
• I’ve never owned a car before, that was actually and seriously designed to be driven at speeds above 100 miles per hour, and taking Traveler up the speedometer makes me feel like I’m suddenly in a completely different world now. The car is way too comfortable for my own good at speeds well in excess of anything you’re legally allowed to drive on any highway in the lower 48.  You know you’re going fast, it just doesn’t feel like you’re driving beyond the limits of the car, or even close.  Road noise is minimal, the car doesn’t feel squirrelly, but tight on the road and perfectly, happily content.  If anything, it feels like it’s waiting for me to ask it for more.  That’s scary.  I feel like I really need to take a course in high speed driving.  There are places that offer it.  Not that you’re supposed to be doing that on the highways, or that I plan on doing that.  Even if it were legal, American driving habits would make an Autobahn here much, much too dangerous.  But like Stan Lee said, with great power comes great responsibility.  The tires may be rated for those speeds, but the driver isn’t.  That’s a whole different kind of driving.  I need to learn it.
• I’m getting a tad over 25 miles per gallon average.  It’s not awful, but not great either.  I’m used to getting in the low thirties, and that’s on regular.  Now I have to buy premium and while my bill hasn’t skyrocketed, it’s something I have to pay attention to more now.  Figure my total gasoline expenses have about doubled.  But as work is just a mile down the road, even if I drove it all the time, which I don’t, my gas bill was never all that much to start with.  Right now my usage is high because I’m still in new car love and I’m busy driving Traveler here and there after work just about every day, just for the shear pleasure of driving it as well as the practical matter of getting to know it.  At some point that’ll taper off and then the big cost will be when I take it on road trips.  This year my drive to Memphis, Topeka, Portland and Oceano and back cost me about $725 in gas.  Double that isn’t an easy figure to swallow all in one go.  So I have to make a point to save up for it.  I put a hundred bucks or so every month into a road trip kitty and I can still do them.  But I just can’t petty cash my gasoline anymore like I used to be able to.  Now I have to pay attention to it.  I have three savings accounts scattered here and there that I’ve just been putting random spare cash into.  I’ll make one of these my road trip kitty and then just use it for road trip gas and miscellaneous expenses.