cash guzzler

There are a number of healthy reasons I will never own a Lexus automobile. If you happen to own a Lexus, I tread carefully in hopes that you do not harbor an unusually intimate connection to your car and will now dislike me indefinitely for maligning it. If it soothes you, by all means feel free to snicker at my ordinary, clearly substandard method of transportation as you whiz by me down the freeway.

The first, and potentially most obvious reason: Any given new Lexus has a price tag on it which trumps the mortgage on my first house. And I did not buy my first house in 1948, either. This car apparently has gold plated engine parts. Or an trunk full of cash, which is one of the only explanations my frugal-to-a-fault mind could logically accept for the radically exorbitant cost of this vehicle.

The next reason centers around my beloved police Sergeant husband, who tells me that Lexus' (or is it Lexii?) are among the most commonly stolen cars here in our-neck-of-the-woods, California. Though the Highway Loss Data Institute reports that the most commonly stolen auto in the whole US last year was the Cadillac Escalade, locally, it's any given Lexus on any given day. That information does not thrill me ~ who wants that pressure of that kind of stress, you know? It's like driving with a giant red and white target branded to your hood.

And rounding out the list is that the manufacturers of this particular brand of automobile do not seem to be concerned with how to design and build a car that has anything to do with my life. Case in point: the catalyst for this rather grouchy-toned post. This lovely frostbitten January evening, as I innocently channel surfed, I came across a Lexus commercial extolling the virtues of the newest luxury feature offered in its' newest 2007 model sedan: automatic parallel parking. Yup, that's right: this car will actually parallel park itself with no driving skills required from the human being at the steering wheel. All for the bargain price of around $80,000.

I'll tell you what. For $80,000, not only should this car park itself, it should wash itself, be able to fill itself with gas, and then go out and get a job in order to be able to pay for itself. Because that's the only way it would ever find itself on my driveway.

...for the whole 4 days it would apparently be allowed to park there before some hoodlum stole it.