Not A Car Guy

This represents my 15th time attending the Coachella Music and Arts Festival, but only my third time using it as an excuse for an epic road trip on California's backroads (see also 2019 and 2023 ).  A relatively late, wet Spring meant that California was surprisingly green, but not yet covered in flowers (as it was in 2023). And mercifully, there were far fewer potholes than there were after the epic rains of 2023. I largely stuck to the roads that I'd discovered on my previous Coachella road trips, which faithfully provided ~1200 miles of the kind of driving that my 2018 Miata was meant for.  Day One: SF to Santa Maria I made a few edits to my previous itineraries in this first 300 mile leg of the trip.  I began by making my way from SF to Skyline Drive (35), which I followed past Alice's Restaurant all the way to Highway 17. It had been a few years since I'd driven the single lane goat track that is 35 between Highways 9 and 17. It's a lovely set of twisties that...

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...

  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!...

  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...

  The time has come to sum up my one year of #SClassLife in the 2015 S550 sedan.  Final mileage tally = 7,441 miles. I'm actually kind of surprised that we put that many miles on it. Ultimately, I think that comes down to Jennifer's surprising affinity for it, plus one long road trip to San Diego and back.  Overall impressions? Let me offer you three: Let me get that for you.  That's basically how I'd sum up the S550. From the soft-close doors to powered trunk lid to the 360 degree overhead camera to the self-parking feature to the Disctronic+ self-driving system, the whole vibe is aimed at minimizing the effort of driving. It makes long drives far less tiring.  It's a sleeper . The S550 is reads to most people as "just another Mercedes sedan" and thus is effectively invisible (at least in San Francisco, where every third car seems to be a Mercedes). In my year of ownership, I think only two people ever commented on the car, which was a stark contrast to t...

  In 2019, I turned the voyage to and from Coachella into a multi-day roadtrip , which led to discovering lots of beautiful central California roads. I decided to do it again for 2023, racking up another ~1,100 miles in beautiful "superbloom" weather. My faithful steed, a 2018 Mazda MX-5 Miata, did not disappoint.  Day One: SF to Santa Maria San Francisco to Santa Maria via 309 miles of California back roads, including some of my very favorites (Carmel Valley to Paso Robles). Beautiful weather, if a bit windy and chilly. But wow, there are a lot of pot holes, thanks to the recent rains. As in 2019, I started by taking Highway 1 down to Half Moon Bay, then up to Skyline Drive, and down from the mountains to Felton via Highway 9, still one of my favorite twisty Miata roads, even if there was a bit more traffic this year. Then back on a relatively boring stretch of Highway 1 to Castroville.  From there I drove into Salinas and then over the Laureles Grade (which I did in 201...

Everyone knows that a Mercedes S Class is an expensive car to own. That's partly why they depreciate so quickly. Well, this car more than lived up to that reputation, proving to be far and away the most expensive car to own of those I've discussed on this blog (compare 2018 Mazda Miata , 2010 Honda Fit , 2002 Porsche 911 Turbo , 1965 Chevy Corvette ).  Deep breath. Total one-year cost of ownership = $27,853. Holy smokes. $2,321/month. I could have (maybe should have) leased a new one for that (although the shortest leases are 24 months, so I'd have ended up spending a lot more total).  The inflated pandemic used car market certainly accounts for a bunch of this. Yes, I knew it was a bad time to buy, and yes I overpaid to get the car I wanted , but I didn't count on another $10k of depreciation in one year. The problem with selling an S550 is the plethora of cheap, minimally optioned cars out there. If you want to get above those prices, you need to find someone who valu...