Portland Autoshow

This weekend we went to the Portland Autoshow. It was a TON of fun! I've got a more detailed description on my family blog. Basically, it was great, I decided the new Mustang convertible isn't a good family car, the Honda Civic Si Sedan would be great fun to drive, but not enough back seat family room for the kids, the Element was nice, but smaller than I want, and the little Honda Fit is perfect for my driving needs. There's only one thing I don't like, it is GUTLESS!! 0-60 in 11 seconds!!!!

So after many years, I was able to get a Honda s2000 (a 2001 model). It was AWESOME!!! You know those old guys with grey hair driving the Porsche's? They finally got their dream car and are enjoying driving it. That's how I felt with the s2000. But it wasn't a good family car, no back seat and you couldn't turn off the passenger side airbag. Semi-ok for one kid, but no way with two. After 10 months I finally agreed to say goodbye to it. Believe me, there's not a day that goes by that I wish I still had that car!!!!! Got a 2001 VW Passat 1.8L turbo. It is actually fun to drive, has decent pickup, really good stereo, but a step down from what I had. The s2000 wasn't necessarily fast (0-60 in 5.2 seconds), but a TON of fun to drive on corners! Perfect 50-50 balance, could corner like it was on rails, just more fun than I've ever had behind a wheel.

Anyhow, the Passat is fun, and a better stereo, but a step down. Now the Fit. 31-37 MPG. I drive about 6 miles/12 minutes to work each day, and I don't drive it much otherwise. If the family goes anywhere, it's in the Honda Pilot. So for me driving back and forth to work, the Fit is a perfect "fit" (ya, I know, bad pun but no other way to say it). BUT, I'm not sure how fast the Passat goes 0-60 - I'm guessing about 8 seconds - the FIT does it in 11 seconds!! So I'm going to from 5 seconds to 11! ARGH! Yes, that's hard to drive a car where I step on the gas and it says, "Huh? What? I'm sorry, you wanted to get up and go? Oh, ok, hang on, let me get things together..." If this thing would just do it in 8 seconds I'd be really happy.

Fortunately there are things I can get to help. K&N has an air filter and an intake filter that can help boost horsepower and fuel economy, so I can probably easily go from 11 seconds to 9. I don't necessarily want something that jumps off the line, just want to be able to downshift, step on the gas and have the car easily pass the car in front of me.

However, there are no Fit's to be found in Portland! I emailed a couple dealers and they told me the Fit is very popular and they don't have any. One said they aren't taking any new orders for at least 6 months. 6 months!! Wow, I guess this thing is really popular. Oh well, that's actually kinda good. We have a tendency to jump into things and this gives us a reason to think about it more and make sure this is right.

There were lots of other cool cars at the Auto show. Audi had their S8, their sporty version of the A8. $110,000! I didn't feel worth enough to even sit in it. Lots of other cool sports cars, lots of actual race cars, we sat in a Land Rover and found out why people like them - talk about cool features! It was a fun 3 hours, and the funniest part was trying to get Riley to leave. Until I sat in the first car, he didn't want to be there or sit in a car. When it was time to go, he was mad cause he wanted to sit in more cars! LOL!