Yesterday, we went out to look at new cars, since kellyv‘s Eclipse was getting a bit long in the tooth. Needless to say, we came home with a new one:

It’s much more practical than her old Eclipse, and light-years ahead of my del Sol in practicality. Not that practicality is necessarily the best measure of a car, of course; but she kept saying things like “driving people around” and “long distance” and “carrying stuff” and who am i to disagree?

It was actually a cooperative effort between her and Lori. I was incolved only at the end, to sign the paperwork; she and Lori sat down on two different computers three thousand miles apart and coordinated a new-car search, so when we walked into the dealership she already knew exactly what she wanted and how many were on the lot. Gotta love technology; it makes taking money out of the consumer’s pocket so much more efficient.

It’s a cool car. Toyota is becoming the Apple of the car industry; from a user-interface point of view, the matrix is the most well-designed car I’ve ever seen. It’s also clearly aimed at the thirtysomething GenX crowd–it has a lot of gadgets with “Gee whiz” tech appeal. Which is, of course, very cool in my book.