O O Ø O O O O
Oh Rental, How I Hate Thee
This was to be last week’s rant. For reasons that should soon become clear, it didn’t make it. Fortunately, Ev was around to save my bacon again. One of these days I’ll actually return the favour. In the meantime, here’s the rant you should have seen. Enjoy!
I’m currently marooned in a hotel room in Salmon Arm. I arrived here via a rental car: It’s a Chevy Cobalt. I’d never been in one before, and if I can help it, I don’t plan on being in one again. It’s almost like Chevy went out of its way to make the car feel cheap.
First, there is the utter lack of power anything. I don’t know what the incremental cost of a power lock is. I don’t care. The safety, security, and convenience of a power lock mean they should be standard on every car made. There’s no key on the back doors, of course, so whenever I need to grab something from the back, I need to unlock the front, reach around, unlock the back, grab the item, relock both, and then make sure my keys are actually outside the car. Then I have to walk around the car and make sure all four doors are locked, just in case someone forgot this car was two notches below base model.
And some of the features just make me wonder if any of the Chevy designers evver actually drove the car:
The lighter—or more appropriately, cellphone-recharging—socket is directly behind one side of the cup holder. That means cellphone charger or coffee, but not both.
The rear-window defrost turns itself off every time you turn the car off. This is dumb. If I don’t need the defrost anymore, I’ll turn it off. This way, whenever I look need to look out the rear window, I get to remember that I recently turned off the car.
The battery (kept in the trunk—no idea why) doesn’t have enough juice to power the cheapest inverter that Canadian Tire sells. There isn’t enough juice to power a laptop. This makes squeezing out the weekly rant difficult, even when you don’t get stuck in Salmon Arm due to a road closure.
The “joystick” for adjusting the (non-power) side mirrors is about an inch long. Try any kind of fine adjustment while you are driving. Forget about adjusting the passenger side—if you didn’t remember to do it before starting out, it will have to wait until you stop.
The sound system sounds muddier than the my under-dash-bolt-on from my old ‘77 Volare station wagon. It had 4 blown speakers.
The automatic transmission is geared to make it impossible to drive the car in any kind of snow. Add to this the way the car happily drop down two gears without the driver mashing down on the accelerator. It’s lovely to suddenly be applying twice the torque to your tires while trying to get up the slippery side of the Coquihalla. Need a tip as to how it should work? Take an old ‘80 2.3 litre Mustang out for a spin one day—mash, lurch—not argh-there-it-goes-again.
So here I sit, marooned in a motel room in Salmon Arm, staring out the window at the falling snow, wondering why you can’t rent a car with winter tires—even when you tell the rental agency it’s for the expressed purpose of driving through the mountains.
Why would they care? Their insurance covers the car. What does it matter to them if I die?
Never mind, I know the answer—it’s exactly the amount of thought that was put into the design of this little lemon.
Kjell Wooding
January 10, 2007
OOØOOOODCCXCVIII
January 10th, 2007 at 7:00 pm
Huh? I read this one last week, and it then disappeared.
Let’s do the time warp again…
January 11th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
It snuck out. Apparently, I don’t understand these new-fangled computer things.
And speaking of putting thought into design, when do I get to trade all my computers for an iPhone?
January 11th, 2007 at 8:38 pm
When you want to pay $700 USD for a 2-yr subsidized plan through Cingular. Garbage.
January 16th, 2007 at 12:11 am
The Jesus Phone (just google “The Jesus Phone”. Dare ya) looks pretty damn hot.
Unfortunately it will come to Canada and it will be on some retarded carrier like the Fido or Rogers network (which is great in Vancouver and crap in Victoria).
And yes, I too am lusting after one. At least 4 people on my IM contact list have messages saying the same thing.
November 9th, 2007 at 10:26 pm
If you don’t like the GM Chevrolet Cobalt, next time you rental car in Montreal try Globe Car rental. They have the Hyundai Elantra 2007 and this car is amazing. Beautiful interior and heated seats.
Check them out GlobeCar.ca