First Drive in USA

Over the weekend, I drove for the first time in the US. Anil was generous enough to allow me to drive his car for a while, and we basically went out for lunch, and some more shopping (whew!! I wonder when all the shopping will end!!). Anyhow, to cut a long story short, it was a interesting experience. He has a black Toyota Camry, and believe me, it's once of the best colors, but a nightmare to maintain!!

Anyhow, at the outset, I sat on the left hand side of the car, and cursed the number of times that I had an opportunity to drive a left-hand drive vehicle in India, and didn't. The first instinct is for the left leg to depress the clutch prior to starting the vehicle, and that's when you realize that it's an automatic without a floor clutch!!!

Once I got it started, the next step was moving it from P (parking) to D(Drive). One needs to keep the brakes depressed, as otherwise the vehicle will roll forwards. After that it was pretty much smooth sailing. Driving was easy, also I didn't hit any of the freeways as that will take some more time.

Once we stopped, I carried out the same sequence, but in reverse - move from D to P, pull the handbrake, turn of ignition. The best part was that after all this, the left hand instinctively looks for a handbrake to pull, as the body is conditioned to do so, in India.

It was fun. We hope to purchase the car (the honda civic) probably within the next two weeks - so then I'll be sure to give more updates. Also we move into our apartment this weekend - so looking forward to that.

Car Hunting

Hello everyone!! Aloha!! Today we formally started car hunting - looked at the Honda's and Toyota's of the world. Also looked at some of the Lexus models (these are the premium segment of the Toyota group).

Incidentally, for the uninformed, in the US, virtually each car manufacturer has two segments which they market. One is the usual segment such as the Honda, Toyota, etc, while the other is the premium / luxury segments, where the same manufacturers push out luxury cars - as in Honda has the Acura, Toyota has the Lexus, in their luxury segments. I'll see if I can get a consolidated list out to you all.

Anyhow, we saw the Honda Civic (normal & Hybrid) as well as the Honda Accord. We also saw the Toyota Yaris, Corolla, Camry and Prius (hybrid). We also saw a few used Lexus cars whose pricing was kinda comparable to that of a new Camry.

The fact of the matter is that in this country one could go bonkers with the amount of choice that is available. Hopefully, within the next couple of weeks we would have narrowed down our search, and finalized our car!!!