Well, actually she doesn’t dance on the sand, but there are a lot of things that our Kia Rio (which will arrive sometime in the next 3 weeks) does that the 106, affectionately known as HForce1, just couldn’t, still can’t, and likely won’t before she gets put to sleep so that the Kia dealer can cash in on the government bonus for getting an 8+ year old car off this street (shouldn’t the bonus be doubled, since the 106 is actually 16 years old?). So failing some dramatic episode in the next 20 days, the 106 will be put out of her misery quietly, and without the spectacular exit that the Justy went for a few years ago, dropping the rear passenger wheel on the DVP in Toronto, rolling its last few hundred meters with an impressive rooster tail of sparks. Should I be knocking on wood here?
Anyway, about those things that I’ll be able to do in the Rio that just weren’t possible in HForce1:
- Turn on the radio without having to remove my gloves or insert a piece of plastic into what’s left of the knob
- Close the glove box (the 106 has more of a glove…shelf)
- Open the passenger door with my right hand (the 106 has weird handles to begin with, but with time the passenger handle has gotten so stiff, that it could only be opened with a left hand, unless your right hand pinky finger happens to have a death wish…or perhaps leprosy)
- Know how much fuel is in the take, even while driving around a curve or corner (the guage on the 106 fluctuates up to 1/4 tank in each direction when you are driving around a corner, among other things)
- Turn the heat onto something other than full blast (at some point the fan decided that it would only blow air – hot or otherwise – when turned on full)
- Stay dry when putting on the passenger seatbelt even when the car has been outside in the rain (assuming, of course, that the doors/windows are closed)
- Open the drivers’ side door on a windy day without fear that a gust of wind might sheer the door right off (a couple of months ago the part that holds the door partway open disappeared, by means I can’t possibly imagine, so the door swings freely on it’s hinges when open)
- Park in the garage without leaving a stain
- See through the entire windshield after using the wipers
- Clear the rear window with the wiper intended for that purpose (on the 106 the rear wiper cleaned a space roughly 10×10 cm…if I was luck)
- Defrost/defog the rear window (I’m not sure if that ever worked in the 106 from the time I bought it)
- Get all the way up a hill even with 4 passengers (I don’t know how this memory just came back to me, but I once had to let people out of my car on an incline where we were fortunately able to flag down another car from our group, because I just couldn’t get it all the way to the parking lot of the mountain-top park – although I suspect that mountain is probably an exaggeration too - we were going hiking at, only to find that we were less than 100 meters from where we were going).
- Be warned when someone opens the door without the key (the 106 was broken into a couple of years ago, likely by a couple of bored kids, who bent the door until they could unlock it, opened it up, and stole – wait for it – an old pair of sunglasses).
- Turn on the turn signal and get only the intended noise (rather than sometimes getting a random extra high-speed ticking that sounds not unlike the lead up to a bomb on TV)
- Adjust the passenger sideview mirror (electrically no less, while on the 106, we couldn’t even manage to adjust it manually!)
I think that that about covers the peculiarities of HForce1, but there are also those joys of just having a, dare I say, modern car:
- Fold-in side mirrors (although the ones on the 106 were spring-loaded, so even though we barely get into the garage with them out, the springy action saved them from ever being torn off if we didn’t aim quite right)
- Non-metal interior (nothing like burning your arm on the inside of the car door on a hot summer day)
- Two reverse lights (for some reason the 106 only has a reverse light on one side…although I didn’t actually think to check whether the Rio was like that, I highly doubt it)
- Air conditioning (need I say more?)
- 4 doors (I’ve never been a fan of 2-door cars, and while the ones I have had have been well-made for getting passengers into the back, and thus bearable, I have always preferred 4 doors for the convenience of passengers and for throwing stuff in the back seat. Just 3 more weeks…)
- Mirror defrosters
- USB port (although I will actually miss the good old-fashioned tape deck with the tape that can be plugged into my iPod)
What I’ll “miss” about the 106:
- The upper body workout that is getting out of tight spaces without power steering (thank goodness I’ve started wall climbing to make up for that!)
- There can never be another HForce1 (or can there?)
- Peugeot green (who wouldn’t miss that one-of-a-kind colour?)
- The sunroof (especially the wheezing noise that occurred for several hours after closing the sunroof – that will hold a special place in my heart)
- The sheer Frenchness of it (especially when the plumes of smoke coming out of the steering column in that first week of ownership looking suspicious like the car was having a cigarette…one of those weird ultra thin “lady’s” cigarettes no less)
- Getting the purchase price back from the government at trade in, because they want to get cars like mine off the road and replaced with newer, more environmentally sound versions (I was lucky to have gotten an excellent deal on the car to begin with, but even luckier to be reimbursed the same amount after nearly 4 years of pretty darn reliable use for a now nearly 16-year-old vehicle)
When I started this post, I had 3 things in mind: the radio button, the glove box, and the heating. I had no idea how many little quirks I had gotten used to on HForce1, and just how many memories the green monster evokes. If I keep trying, I could probably go on for hours…so I won’t. (But I can’t promise not to come back and edit this post later).
