Ode to a Rental Car
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008
Recently our car broke down, unfortunately (is that ever fortunate?) it was on an interstate somewhere in Middle Tennessee while on our way to my little sister’s wedding. It was freezing outside, night, and not exactly a bustling metropolis. My Daddy came and towed the car to safety and we proceeded to get a rental car for the week so that we could retrieve it from the garage the following weekend.
Welcome to the Dodge Nitro. I asked the young man behind the counter if he could describe it to us so we’d know which vehicle it was. Middle Tennessee apparently has a shortage of strip malls that rental cars want to be in so this one was located inside a SuperWalMart. I personally find super a bit of an overstatement, but I digress. The young man looked at me with a somewhat amused glance and said that it was a bit “boxy”. He. Was. Right. We went to the cars and were faced with a white abomination to nature. You might find my lack of enthusiasm for it’s complete lack of aerodynamics strange but you can rely on my judgement for knowing ugly cars when you find out…I drive an Aztek. Oh yes, the car that looks to be made of legos. That one’s mine. The Nitro made my Aztek look good, and there’s not much out there that can clear that bar. It got worse, the inside was just as boxy as the outside and instead of a second plug/lighter in the back we were confronted with a regular electrical plug. Now, I don’t know how many of you out there have kids but you have to be familiar with the fact that all of our portable dvd players have only the plug in for cars, none of them have regular plugs. We sacrificed our cell phone chargers for the dvd player and made the best of it. I will say that there was a decent sized back area that held our luggage. It was not as spacious as the one in the Aztek, but then not much is. Azteks are made for carrying mountain bikes and canoes and, in our case, luggage and pets and the occasional dollhouse.
Despite its rather unfortunate appearance the Nitro did have very good gas mileage, Sirius radio and more comfortable seats. All in all I would say that the Dodge Nitro should have the same marketing that the crazy people in that Dudley Moore movie gave to the Volvo: “Boxy, but good.”
Recently our car broke down, unfortunately (is that ever fortunate?) it was on an interstate somewhere in Middle Tennessee while on our way to my little sister’s wedding. It was freezing outside, night, and not exactly a bustling metropolis. My Daddy came and towed the car to safety and we proceeded to get a rental car for the week so that we could retrieve it from the garage the following weekend.
Welcome to the Dodge Nitro. I asked the young man behind the counter if he could describe it to us so we’d know which vehicle it was. Middle Tennessee apparently has a shortage of strip malls that rental cars want to be in so this one was located inside a SuperWalMart. I personally find super a bit of an overstatement, but I digress. The young man looked at me with a somewhat amused glance and said that it was a bit “boxy”. He. Was. Right. We went to the cars and were faced with a white abomination to nature. You might find my lack of enthusiasm for it’s complete lack of aerodynamics strange but you can rely on my judgement for knowing ugly cars when you find out…I drive an Aztek. Oh yes, the car that looks to be made of legos. That one’s mine. The Nitro made my Aztek look good, and there’s not much out there that can clear that bar. It got worse, the inside was just as boxy as the outside and instead of a second plug/lighter in the back we were confronted with a regular electrical plug. Now, I don’t know how many of you out there have kids but you have to be familiar with the fact that all of our portable dvd players have only the plug in for cars, none of them have regular plugs. We sacrificed our cell phone chargers for the dvd player and made the best of it. I will say that there was a decent sized back area that held our luggage. It was not as spacious as the one in the Aztek, but then not much is. Azteks are made for carrying mountain bikes and canoes and, in our case, luggage and pets and the occasional dollhouse.
Despite its rather unfortunate appearance the Nitro did have very good gas mileage, Sirius radio and more comfortable seats. All in all I would say that the Dodge Nitro should have the same marketing that the crazy people in that Dudley Moore movie gave to the Volvo: “Boxy, but good.”