Thursday, June 22, 2006
Trying new stuff
I went with my dad to service the car yesterday. We waited there the whole morning, and I spent the time watching CNA show the soccer highlights about 4 times. I got so bored that I walked over to the Honda and Toyota showrooms to pick up price lists and brochures.
We went home around 12, then discovered that a light wasn't working, so we went back. The service guy had gone for lunch, and we waited till he got back. By the time the light was fixed, it was nearly 2 pm. On the way back, my dad decided to go Toyota to take a look, since I had checked earlier and found out that the manual Vios is in.
We waited awhile for the same salesman who gave me his card in the morning on my recce trip. He had another customer to attend to. After 8 months, I finally got to drive a manual car again. The Vios was quite nice to drive, although I'm not really used to the small pedals. However, at least the brake pedal isn't much higher than the accelerator, like it is on the auto Vios. The manual was quite easy to drive, although I'm a bit rusty and jerked the car a little. The brake wasn't overly sensitive and this made it quite easy to stop smoothly. I didn't find the steering as stiff as the one on the auto Vios too.
Tried Toyota's hybrid car too, the Prius. It's really high tech. There's a touch screen in the middle which also shows the energy flow while you are driving. It shows if the car is currently powered by the petrol engine or the electric motor, as well as the direction of power flow between the battery and the motor. The suspension was good. However, it's not very powerful, so the pickup is a bit slow. The brake is also very sensitive, making it hard to control smoothly at slow speeds. The ignition and gear shift are cute. You slot a little keycard in, then press the "Power" button to start the car. It looks a lot like a computer power button. The gear shift has a "Park" button, but the rest are controlled by a little joystick controller, which looks a lot like those you see in arcades. Actually, we tried this car for fun, at $80000, it's way too expensive. You can't save $20000 in petrol over the expected lifespan of the car.
The salesmen at Toyota were great. They explained everything patiently and there was no pressure to buy. The one attending to us still bothered to explaing things even after my dad said that he has no intention of buying that day. That was so unlike Opel's salesgirl the other time, who showed no interest in us as soon as she realised we were just hunting around.
As a result of all this, I had lunch at 5pm, and dinner at around 815pm. Installed Messenger Live too. It looks very nice, and there are lots of little features hidden in various menus. I have yet to explore it fully, but a very nice touch is the ability to change the colour of the windows to any colour you please. However, the irritating this is that display pictures are no longer shown beside contact names in the main window. Everyone looks like a little pawn now.
We went home around 12, then discovered that a light wasn't working, so we went back. The service guy had gone for lunch, and we waited till he got back. By the time the light was fixed, it was nearly 2 pm. On the way back, my dad decided to go Toyota to take a look, since I had checked earlier and found out that the manual Vios is in.
We waited awhile for the same salesman who gave me his card in the morning on my recce trip. He had another customer to attend to. After 8 months, I finally got to drive a manual car again. The Vios was quite nice to drive, although I'm not really used to the small pedals. However, at least the brake pedal isn't much higher than the accelerator, like it is on the auto Vios. The manual was quite easy to drive, although I'm a bit rusty and jerked the car a little. The brake wasn't overly sensitive and this made it quite easy to stop smoothly. I didn't find the steering as stiff as the one on the auto Vios too.
Tried Toyota's hybrid car too, the Prius. It's really high tech. There's a touch screen in the middle which also shows the energy flow while you are driving. It shows if the car is currently powered by the petrol engine or the electric motor, as well as the direction of power flow between the battery and the motor. The suspension was good. However, it's not very powerful, so the pickup is a bit slow. The brake is also very sensitive, making it hard to control smoothly at slow speeds. The ignition and gear shift are cute. You slot a little keycard in, then press the "Power" button to start the car. It looks a lot like a computer power button. The gear shift has a "Park" button, but the rest are controlled by a little joystick controller, which looks a lot like those you see in arcades. Actually, we tried this car for fun, at $80000, it's way too expensive. You can't save $20000 in petrol over the expected lifespan of the car.
The salesmen at Toyota were great. They explained everything patiently and there was no pressure to buy. The one attending to us still bothered to explaing things even after my dad said that he has no intention of buying that day. That was so unlike Opel's salesgirl the other time, who showed no interest in us as soon as she realised we were just hunting around.
As a result of all this, I had lunch at 5pm, and dinner at around 815pm. Installed Messenger Live too. It looks very nice, and there are lots of little features hidden in various menus. I have yet to explore it fully, but a very nice touch is the ability to change the colour of the windows to any colour you please. However, the irritating this is that display pictures are no longer shown beside contact names in the main window. Everyone looks like a little pawn now.
posted by cosine @ 3:18 PM 
