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March 21, 2008

This Rental Car Was Better On My Back

This past week we were in Austin, TX for the SXSW Music Festival, a vacation for me and a business trip for my husband's work. Because our truck needed some repairs, we put it in the shop and rented a car to drive out to Texas. We got a PT Cruiser (no, I'm not being paid for a mention), which is not a car I would have picked for myself if I had been given a choice. I was pleasantly surprised.

One of the features I liked right off the bat was the roomy interior with deep wells for our legs. The seats were firm and allowed us to sit higher than a typical car. The added benefit of the firm seats was adequate support for long distance trips that I've noticed is lacking in other cars we've rented. Of course, so many vehicles today allow you to adjust the seat-back for optimal ergonomic access to the steering components.

What I didn't like was that the steering wheel blocked my sight line to the speedometer (in defense of the manufacturer, I did discover that the steering wheel was adjustable a couple of days after we got to Texas). There was no lever inside the car to pop the trunk--we discovered this would open once all the doors were unlocked--I think this is a detriment to personal safety. By the way, the owners manual is incredibly hard to use. Each section has its own table of contents rather than one easy to use guide at the front of the manual. We never did figure out how to turn off the automatic headlights and interior light. By the time that became an issue worth getting into an argument about (we worried it would wear down the battery), we were so sick of trying to use the owners manual we just figured out a work-around.

Being back into our own vehicle was a bit of a let-down. Besides the rough and noisy ride, the bench seat in our pick-up does not have an adjustable seat-back, so I feel like I'm leaning posteriorly putting more pressure on my tailbone. This posture doesn't allow me to take advantage of the natural support afforded by the lordotic curve of the low back. Being able to adjust my seat back to take optimum advantage of the way the lumbar vertebrae stack and bear loads prevents my back from fatiguing so quickly.

Would I every buy a PT Cruiser? I don't know. We only got 24 miles to the gallon on the highway. Our 19-year-old pick-up truck still gets better mileage than that. Promises by the hybrid car makers of 70 MPG are ambitious claims, unfortunately. In SUV models, reports show they only get an additional 5 MPG improvement over the conventional combustion engine. For now I'll keep driving my little pick-up and see if I can top out the mileage around 400,000 miles.

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Posted by linda at March 21, 2008 2:19 PM