It was 2014 and the missus' 2003 Commodore was over 10 years old. That's around the time, in that vintage of car, when the things that are going to break, start to break.
Not all that much ever went wrong on the trusty Commodore, but I had come into some money and my wife wanted a car with more than 5 seats to ferry kids around. We'd never bought a brand new car. I went the the car dealerships and test drove a few seven seater cars...sure I could get a Prado/Landcruiser but no, after the Hilux I realised I don't need a 4x4, so I didn't bother looking at Toyotas. There was a Nissan Pathfinder which was a nice car but the CVT Continuously Variable Transmission scared me off. It drove weird and it was too radical. I wanted time-proved tech in my cog swapper.
The Ford Territory would also have been a good car. The diesel version would have got great economy, but the 3rd row of seats were a joke. Even very small children would have struggled to fit.
In 2014, for a run-of-the-mill car, that pretty much left the CX9. Which was a good thing, my wife already liked the feel of Mazdas (the '94 Ford Laser she drove was pretty much just a rebadged Mazda 323.)
Parted with way more cash than I ever thought I would part with for a car - they talked me up to the "Luxury" model (I really wanted the leather seats) - but ten years down the track and my wife still likes it...so the accountant in me says that's good value for only 5k a year. I refer to it as "the tank" or "the aircraft carrier" because it is so big. I struggle to park it, the missus has no problem though! They put a 210kW V6 in it! So it's surprisingly zippy, but at the cost of around 15L of petrol per hundred kms!
It eats front tyres, which is to be expected being such a heavy front wheel drive car. Since the wheel rims are 20" the first two set me back more than I'd ever paid for a tyre...but ten years on the most tyres that size are fair price in the scheme of things. I guess even 20" rims are nothing these days...you know you pretty much can't buy 13" and 14" rims any more? :-)
5km on the clock!
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