We went car-buying on Friday.

The last time was in 2006, when we sold our minivan and bought a Civic Hybrid.

We didn’t want a Prius, because TG has an irrational (or given recent news, entirely rational…) dislike of Toyotas, and I didn’t like the idea of a ‘statement’ car. We bought it, first and foremost, for the HOV lane stickers, but also because I thought it was neat technology, and because I do think that cutting back on our energy consumption in non-hair shirt ways is a good thing to do.

Note that I really don’t see hybrids as all that environmentally benign, so our plate – ECO FROD – reflected that.

Well, at the end of this year, the HOV stickers on hybrids expire, and probably won’t be renewed, and we’ve put 60,000 miles on ours with decent – not great, not terrible – results. We had to replace the main battery (warranty) but it was brain damage to get the local dealer – Scott Robinson Honda, who does Honda’s fleet cars (American Honda is here in Torrance) struggled for a bit to deal with the driveability problems caused by the dying battery, but once I escalated they were great in getting it all dealt with.

So – no stickers soon, a car with hypercomplex technical systems and a so-so support chain. Sounds like time to reconsider what we’d do.

I kicked the issue over to my frugality friend at Downturn Living, and she and her readers were clear that the frugal, economically sensible thing was to keep the car.

So of course we decided not to.

Instead, this Friday, we bought a new 2009 Honda Civic GX – a natural gas powered car.

I was initially kind of anxious about a NGV – just that the logistics of refuelling are more complex (there are some 26 fuelling stations in the parts of Southern California where we typically go – and I worry that TG, who tends to run her vehicles on fumes would wind up getting towed.

But I put them all into a map and loaded it into our Garmin, and so far – after 4 days and 300 miles – it’s been pretty darn easy.

Home filling stations are (sort of) available – the Phill brand went BK and may be releaunched – but I’m unsure of the economics for someone who drives as little as we do. We do long trips, and the odds are that we’ll be renting more for that – I’d guess that 10K of the hybrid’s miles are on road trips.

And the new car is interesting – really downmarket and defeatured compared to our hybrid, which not only has a leather interior but is in a far higher state of trim. It’s a real fleet car…just the basics. We’ll invest in a decent stereo and leave it at that, I’m thinking.

We bought the car through our credit union’s car-buying service, and got a great deal on it. Thanks to Jeff Wyrick and Auto Expert Online…and over the next year or so I’ll report on our experience with it.

Back in the 70’s I read Amory Lovin’s Soft Energy Paths and noted his belief in building out a NG infrastructure as a transition plan to hydrogen. It made sense to me then…we’ll see if it makes sense now.
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