Ah, the Teg is back in the shop. I was hoping it was just going to be an oil change and alignment, but it turns out the suspension needs some work and rear brake pads and rotors need to be replaced. Not cheap! BUT…
The Acura dealer hooked me up with a loaner. Usually they do 50/50 with Enterprise and I get a rental (always nothing exciting like a Ford or whatever the popular people mover is of the day). But Wednesday they hooked me up with a 2005 Acura TL (automatic, no navigation). Wow! wow wow wow…
I’ll start by saying its a big car. I bit too big for me, but it makes getting around easy and fun so I can deal with it. It had only 1450 miles on it when they gave me the keys. So it still has that new car smell with a strong hint of leather. Mmm… The weather has been crappy out so the outside of the car is a complete mess. Inside is roomy, comfy, and very cool. The instrument panel is almost a work of art. You put the key in and the blue hash marks on the dials glow along with the red needles. As you turn the key to power everything up, the white numbers and auxillary info comes to life. Every time I get in, I stare at the dash for a moment to soak it all in.
This TL has the 3.2L engine cranking out about 270hp which gets it moving very quickly when you want it to. Its a blast to rocket it onto a freeway. The rental is an automatic, but it has a sport shift so you can command it to use the gears you want when you want. With the cold weather, heated mirrors and seats really make going to work in the morning much easier. I think my next car will need to have heated seats. Maybe.
What really rocks is I know the guy who did some R&D work on the this TL. He told me to just test drive one and I HAVE to bring a long an audio DVD. Well, now is the chance and yesterday I stopped over at John and Adam’s place and they had a demo audio DVD. We popped it in. I was amazed. Individual sounds were coming from individual places within the car. It was sort of like being IN the performance. I HIGHLY recommend getting an audio DVD and popping it in. If you don’t have one, then give the XM satellite radio a whirl. It sounds good, but not as good as the audio DVD. And with a sound setup like the TL’s, FM just seems old-school.
I get to play with the TL till Monday and maybe then I’ll get my Teg back. But you know what? I don’t mind. I think I can tolerate driving a $33,000 car… (I just wish I could keep it longer!)