Our Brand New Prius!

Yesterday was a very exciting day for us!  It was the day that we finally picked up our new car!   It will be the third car we’ve ever had.

The first one we had was a 2006 Renault Clio, it was the company car given to us by Xander’s former employer.  I was so excited to finally have a car after seven years without one, they could have given us a go-kart and I would have been over the moon.  The Clio was a great little first car for us though, and we loved it for the entire four years that we owned it.

It just happened that at the same time as the lease was up on the Clio, Xander switched employers and was given a 2010 Opel Astra Turbo as a loaner car.  We had that car from August 2010 until yesterday.  We LOVED this car, so much so that the Opel Astra Turbo was one of our final two models that we narrowed our list down to in the end.   The only reason it wasn’t chosen was because it had 20% tax and the car we chose had only 14%, allowing us to get more car for our money.

Are you noticing a pattern with the cars we’ve had so far?

Yes, both were SILVER.  We are SO over the silver!

Both of these cars were chosen for us but we really liked them a lot.  I’d be lying if I said we weren’t happy to finally be able to choose our own. We got to decide exactly what we wanted right down to the smallest detail, it was GREAT!  We spent months visiting every dealership around, sitting in, photographing, researching and test driving every single make and model of car within our price range (and even a few out of our price range!).

In the end we decided on the newest, coolest, most gadget and fun filled Toyota Prius on the market… in Barcelona RED!  Here are some photos I took yesterday.

When we got to the dealership, our car was sitting there waiting for us right next to the desk where we were to sign the papers.

While Xander sat down to go over the paperwork with the salesman, I made myself busy taking photos.  I was far too excited to just sit there.  Oh, and see the red thing on the dash?  That’s a box of celebration chocolates.  Boy did we celebrate!

Once all the paperwork was finished we got in the car and the salesman explained how everything worked.  He helped Xander sync his phone to the car via Bluetooth, ran through how the GPS works and explained what the 40000 buttons all do as well.

We’ve since forgotten about 39995 of the buttons, so I’m going to give the manual a read if I can find an English version online.

After everything had been explained, and a few chocolates had been eaten, it was time to drive away in our new car.  We were so excited!  Well, I was excited… Xander was nervous he was going to scratch the car and had a hard time getting his left leg and right arm to stop doing clutch and stick shift motions.  Learning to drive the automatic was a little weird for him at first.

We went for a nice long drive, and I was happy that it was sunny and warm enough to drive with the sunroof open.  I can tell I am going to really love having a sun roof.

We eventually had to return home, but that didn’t mean I had to stop taking photos.  That’s what balconies were built for!  It  was a good opportunity to get the car from a higher angle.  You can see that we also have a solar roof on the car, which has some really great functions I’ll talk about later.  The solar panel is on the roof behind the sunroof.

Xander clearly hadn’t had enough of the car yet either… the minute dinner was in the oven he legged it down to go sit in the car and play with the buttons.  Boys and their toys…

Driving in this car feels like driving in a little space pod.  It’s fantastic!  The car does so much automatically that we are fairly certain that by the time the four years is up on the lease, Xander will have forgotten mostly everything about how to drive.

We have chosen to give her a name that we think suits her and is appropriate for the ‘”space ship” feeling we get when we are inside.  Her name is Ripley!

There is so much I love about this car, I don’t even know where to start.  For now I will leave you with the photos of the car itself.  I will take some more detailed photos tomorrow and come back with a bit more on all the cool things we love about it.