At CarAdvice we always talk cars and we always drive cars… but there is one thing we don’t do very often - and that is buy cars. At CarAdvice we always talk cars and we always drive cars… but there is one thing we don’t do very often - and that is buy cars. So as part of the ever-expanding CarAdvice family, we have added a new four-wheeled staff member to our Melbourne team, a 2016 Volkswagen Golf GTI(with VW navigation). Yep. We bought a Golf. It wasn’t an easy decision to come to either. Like you, we had our parameters that governed the cars we could choose from. The Melbourne office car needed to be practical, so five-doors was a must. It needed to be fun, because - well, fun! 50,000 and importantly, it needed to be something we, as a team, considered to be a car we would recommend to any of our friends and family. Plus, it needed to be ‘on brand’ and match up well with our Sydney office car, a 2015 Audi S1. The shortlist was formed. We purchased it from a local Volkswagen dealer and have no other secret deals up our sleeve, so will basically own it and service it the same way that anyone else would. The 2016-spec GTI scored a few mild updates including Apple CarPlay and Android Auto integration, so we’ll be playing with both these systems and taking note of any future functionality that becomes available. Tartan and white was an easy combo to pick as we all love that iconic GTI interior and white is an excellent base for a branded wrap. A design is well in the works, which should see the CarAdvice GTI look like no other, so expect to see it rolling orange in a local Melbourne neighbourhood near you soon! If installing an Android Car Stereo in your car, that would be great!
My frustration with the ICE drivetrain escalated as our altitude increased; it became harder and harder to keep up with the 90mph traffic as we traveled east on I-40. I had forgotten how much an ICE is affected by thin air. Not a problem with an electric, not even in the Volt, in my experience. My disappointment in Toyota's decision to exit the BEV market at this time amplified every time I floored the throttle. After a couple of days in Flagstaff, I got over it and started liking the car. The current RAV4, especially in AWD form, is a nice package. By the time we were headed home from the five-day trek, I was hooked, and wished I could find a reason to keep one of these things. But we would only need to use it on family trips that are beyond the RAV4 EV's reach, which is at most several times a year. So to console myself I kept it for two more days; ended up driving around town a bit and took the boys up to the mountains to play in fresh snow on New Year's day. 258 including tax and fees. 120, which in my mind was well worth it. A small price to pay to drive the heck out of someone else's car.
Back in the old days, so I was told, a year-end holiday tradition for my employer was to hand out turkeys to employees from the back of a truck. Eventually, by the time I was hired on, the tradition morphed into a gift certificate to be redeemed at a local grocery chain for a frozen bird. Perhaps not as nostalgic as a fresh-plucked hen from the tailgate of a stakebed truck (or at least that how I imagined it, loosely based on folklore passed down from the elders), but still very much appreciated. For me, that small gesture of generosity helped set the mood for a warm holiday season. As the years passed, the privately held company was sold to a publicly traded one, then broken into pieces and sold off for a tidy profit. Cultural practices and traditions that once set us apart from other companies gradually disappeared, including the free turkey. Layoffs, a shrinking market, and shareholders with expectations changed the climate and cadence of the workplace. Even the company-funded year-end parties have been curtailed.
We had to be lean and mean. The little holiday touches that reminded me that this company cares about its employees seemed to have completely faded away… that is, until one day last week when I pulled into work. Because on that day, there were twice as many dual-port Chargepoint EVSEs than the day before. Eight EV parking spaces in total, taking up maybe a third of the first floor parking spaces that were along the west wall of the structure. It was an awesome sight. I’m not sure what was playing on SiriusXM, but it might as well have been a chorus of angels at that very moment. That visual had way more impact on me than discovering a free turkey certificate in my company mail slot. I pulled my Focus Electric into the last available space and plugged in. It was actually no surprise to me that the additional EVSEs were coming.
