The Change that Left Me Feeling Spoiled by My 10-Year-Old Car
When I started working at Viget, I realized I was going to need a car for the commute, so I went out and bought one of these beauties.
That’s right. Get jealous. It’s a 2006 Ford Fusion, First of its Name, and soon to take the world of taxi cabs by storm. I bought it one-year used, from a dealership in Maryland, and with its low price, decent gas mileage, and plenty of room to schlep stuff back and forth from my parents’ house, it felt like a great deal — something I’d drive for a few years, or until I didn’t need to commute by car anymore.
Then it came with me when I moved to San Francisco. And when I moved in with my partner, we decided to keep my car rather than hers. Then it was still going strong when we moved back across the country to Boston. And here we are, more than a decade later, and it’s still the family car.
Sure, it only gets like 28mpg these days, and it got a few dings from a hail storm last year, and my kid has basically made the back seat a permanent biohazard zone, but I’ve only ever had to change the oil and replace a single sensor. It’s been everything I could have hoped for.
Car Gets a Birthday Present
About a year ago, when I started driving more regularly, I decided to make a change. The car was still humming along fine, but dealing with an iPhone on the dashboard as a GPS, podcast player, and handsfree phone seemed like a disaster waiting to happen.
So I spent $500 — more than I’d ever spent on the car — and bought an Alpine iLX-007, which does exactly two things: an AM/FM radio, and Apple CarPlay. It has a big 7" touchscreen, a small bevel with only two real buttons, and it looks great.
That’s right. No CD player (I don’t really have any of those anymore), no knobs (I mainly use the steering wheel controls), no terrible, auto-manufacturer-designed interfaces to fight with on a daily basis. I have a Lightning cable coming out of my dash, my phone plugs into it, and I have one of the world’s best stereo systems (ignoring the speakers — those still suck). It even has a Siri button, and came with a microphone I ran up to the top of the windshield, and even that looks pretty good.
A Year with CarPlay
CarPlay isn’t perfect, but it’s by far the best car stereo I’ve ever had. I have access to music whenever I want it, can listen to the game on the MLB app, have podcasts via Overcast, a great handsfree phone, and a nav system that’s easily better than most made by car manufacturers.
The best part? I’ve gotten two solid upgrades so far. When iOS 9 came out last year, it had some nice improvements to CarPlay. Now, with iOS 10, the Maps app is significantly improved. Software updates for your car? New features? It’s almost like having a Tesla. You know, except for the rest of the car.
But most of all, it feels ridiculously safer than doing all the same things on a phone attached to the dash or windshield. There are a bunch of things I can do via Siri, other things I can do via the steering wheel controls, and for everything else there’s a large, bright, responsive screen.
Spoiled Rotten
A few weeks ago, I had my first major issue with the car. It’s power control module (like a logic board) went bad. It happened over a weekend, when the garages were closed, so the family went out looking at new cars, in case it wasn’t going to be worth repairing.
But here’s the thing — nearly every new car we got into felt at least a bit like a downgrade. Forget the BMWs, the Volvos, the Audis: they all felt like I was using some 1995 designer’s vision of the future, with low-contrast designs and fidgety, non-responsive controls. I didn’t want to spend real money and feel like we’d taken a step backwards in one of the most important aspects of a car.
And every year, more cars are getting CarPlay built-in. The Volvo XC90 has it this year, so I’m hoping that next year’s newly-refreshed XC60 follows suit. The 2017 Ford Escape has it, but I couldn’t get anyone’s attention at the dealership to try it out, and ain’t nobody got time for that.
So we bit the bullet and spent $1500 to replace the PCM in the car. It’s probably worth about that on a trade-in, so it’s no great deal, but we’re hoping we can get at least another year and a half or three out of it.
You know, while all the other cars catch up to our 2006 Fusion.
