New Car

This came up fairly quickly as my 2007 Subaru Outback has had some recent engine power struggles.  With a trip looming to Utah for my upcoming race, I had been poking around and decided to arrange some test drives.  We started looking into some newish Subaru Crosstreks and Outbacks but they have started to creep up so much in price and still struggle with some power issues (even given the newer stronger 2021 engines that were just released).  Being disappointed, we asked our neighbor about their Mazda and how they liked it and they gave it glowing reviews.  I started doing a bit more research and found that the Mazda CX-30 and CX-5 really were some of the best cars in class for their areas.  

I called up the dealer and took a CX-30 AWL 2.5L Turbo for a spin and I was blown away.  It was amazing to drive, however the back seats were a bit small and we have growing boys.  After some discussions with Tara, I looked more seriously at the CX-5 AWL 2.5L Carbon Turbo edition (shown above) and it was virtually the same car with a slightly bigger back seat area.  We also test drove some Subaru's this weekend and were still unimpressed and came back to the Mazda dealer where they informed us that they were WAY behind in car sales with COVID-19 and were able to take another $4k off the price.  With the offer on the table it was an easy decision...we were sold.

 

The Carbon edition is a special edition that only comes in a special metallic gray, red leather seats, black 19" wheels, and a 10 speaker Bose entertainment system.  The one catch was that there were very few in the US and it was a few weeks still until they could finally deliver mine.  Part of that is from the general global supply chain issues from COVID-19 and the other is due to a computer chip shortage as the manufacturing plant in Japan burned to the ground.  Luckily, I got one of the first and the last that will likely be delivered in 2021.  It feels crazy to buy a new car, as this is the first new car I have ever owned, but also pretty special.  I am loving it so far and hope it can take me on many great adventures.