I’ve been think­ing about buy­ing a new car for mostly the wrong reasons.

Petty rea­son #1. My Civic has a ter­ri­ble amount of road noise. Dri­ving the local roads in Seat­tle, even at a pal­try 25 mph, it’s like rid­ing a coal mine cart in an Indi­ana Jones movie.

Petty rea­son #2. My Civic has a cas­sette radio and play­ing my tunes through my cas­sette adapter is, and always has been, like lis­ten­ing to a live record­ing on a card­board speaker.

Petty rea­son #3. I love rid­ing my bike with Elle, but I can’t get bike rack that fits through my apartment’s garage. I need a car that can effort­lessly fit a big and small bike.

Petty rea­son #4. My Civic has a great turn­ing radius and is small enough for city dri­ving, but improv­ing on both these dimen­sions would be even bet­ter for the nar­row Seat­tle roads. It would open up a whole new world of park­ing opportunities!

Petty rea­son #5. My Civic is aging and approach­ing the high main­te­nance phase of its life. Who wants to spend time replac­ing a tim­ing belt here, tires there as it slowly falls apart? Bet­ter to rid of it now and save that time for some­thing more enjoy­able, like eat­ing cheap eth­nic food on the Ave.

I sup­pose the only legit­i­mate rea­son I have is that I feel sur­rounded by emblems of my bro­ken mar­riage. I live with the car, the fur­ni­ture, the bed, and the kitchen­ware of a failed 8 year rela­tion­ship, and as shal­low as it seems to gripe about things, it’s really hard to move on when I’m liv­ing and using things from my painful past. I don’t know how much that’s worth; I don’t think I could put a price on it. But surely a $150 monthly car pay­ment is well below its value.

So what do I want? I’m look­ing at a Black­berry Pearl Honda Fit. They’re small, fuel eco­nom­i­cal, with extremely ver­sa­tile space for peo­ple and things. I’m used to Hon­das, their usabil­ity is one of the best in the car indus­try, and they’re pretty cheap. As much as I hate cars, I do spend a lot of time com­mut­ing back and forth to Kirk­land, so why not have a nice, com­pact lit­tle car that can zip around those Lake Wash­ing­ton curves? The Fit wouldn’t be dra­mat­i­cally bet­ter than my ’02 Civic, but would be an incre­men­tal improve­ment, in a petty sort of way.