New Car Blues

Denise has decided that she wants a "grown-up car" now that the Jeepster has become too costly to maintain. She's fallen for the VW Passat, which is a sweet car, but damn, it's expensive. The price has prompted me to look around a bit at what's available from American car manufacturers that's not an SUV or style-less econobox.

My findings: there's nada. Every car from Buick, Chevy, Ford, etc., just screams "Cheapo" to me. I can't get past the chintzy interiors or the unnecesarily cluttered exteriors. Why can't we design and build understated, tasteful cars in this country?

Look at edmunds.com in the $15k-$25k range at any American car and you'll find the phrase "some low-grade interior components" or similar in darn near every review. That means plastic dash bits that fade or fall off in two years and chrome on the radio. In a $25,000 car.

No wonder Detroit builds nothing but behemoth SUVs: it can't compete with Passats, Altimas, or Camrys in aesthetics and quality, so it super-sizes everything to distract you from the fact you're driving a truck with carpeting.