rubah's Precious Little Life

When my grandparents died, I got a sizeable sum as inheritance. It's been sitting in my parents' account since then, but the planets finally aligned, and now I have a new midnight blue 2010 Nissan Altima (yes, I waited for the model year clearance sales xD)

The coolest thing about this car so far has been the keyless everything. Put the key in my pocket, it emits a weak RF (I imagine) signal so that when you stand next to the doors/trunk, you are authenticated, and can use push-buttons to unlock/open the doors.

The same is true for when you are inside the car. Step on the brake and push the starter. Push it again when you are in park, and it'll turn off :]

The console features the standard oil temp (who has ever had their engine overheat in modern cars?), tachometer (goes up to 8000 rpm), speedometer (160mph), fuel gage (this one isn't broken <3) and a digital multidisplay. I haven't played around with it a whole lot yet, but it shows your instantaneous fuel economy (in mpg in English units, and l/100km in SI), your average speed and fuel economy (I need to read the booklet, as I'm not sure if this is average for life of the car or the trip. Average for life of the car isn't very useful, I don't think.)

The cruise control settings are on the steering wheel. I didn't opt for a special package car, so there are no audio controls on there. *shrug* I will have to revamp my interstate driving method of setting cruise and turning it off to slow down instead of braking. The altima has so much more inertia than my cavalier! It takes much longer to slow down. It feels odd when I allow it to slow, like something's catching. Perhaps it's an artifact of the CVT? Speaking of the transmission, it is a "manumatic", which means you can manually up-shift or down-shift if you choose. I tried it out last night, and it was interesting! I haven't driven a manual since the very first car I learned to drive in, which was my dad's old truck he took me out to the pasture in xD Nice to have the option though

I monitored my gages pretty closely while driving, and when accelerating to 100mph (no cops around!), it didn't even break 3000 rpm The cavvy ran in 3K routinely on interstate, and sometimes approached 4K when I had to lose momentum when approaching some of the killer hills on 540.
When driving ~75-80, the instantaneous fuel economy seemed to vary a lot between 25-45. At 65, it was a lot more stable, hanging around 30-35.

Without giving away too much financial info, I'll just say that the payment plan I chose was estimated to give me the maximum boost to my credit score while paying a minimum in interest. The car should be paid off in a year.