"Borrowing" Our Parent's Cars, and Why It Can Be So Much Fun
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I've always had tiny coupes or sedans (see, e.g. beater Cavaliers and Grand Ams), but I won't lie that I've had a lot of fun playing with my parents' rides. Whether it was home at break or for the summer, driving a Ford Explorer or an Acura TL was just such a trip compared to my car.
It got me to thinking, since I'll be taking in the Super Bowl with my family. We've always had cars on offer for whoever needed them among my relatives. Need to haul a lot of stuff to move into an apartment? Take the SUV, the keys are in the laundry room. One of the cars is in the shop and you have a job interview? Great, take the TL, just remember to keep it looking somewhat nice.
And one of the upshots of being able to drive a variety of cars is that I have a better sense of what I want in my next car. I don't need a cavernous SUV, but the fact that the Explorer was rear-wheel drive helped me become a much better winter driver. Likewise, it was an automatic, and I learned how to feather the throttle in turns to make it go just a little better.
The TL taught me what I love and hate about leather seating, especially over long distances. The same thing with technology; there's a lot of stuff that is neat like Bluetooth integration and the dash-based navigation system, but sometimes it felt more like a crutch. And the tiny rear viewing area made parallel parking murder.
If you're just getting back to school, or if you've had a few weeks back, you probably have some winter break memories of driving your parents' cars around, even if it was just jigsaw-puzzle-piece parking maneuvers to fit 10 cars in a tiny driveway. Which features do you like? What would you like to see in your next car? Extra points for any (legal) stories of getting a little bit more bang for your buck than your parents intended when they handed you the keys.
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