Flo and Friends by Jenny Campbell for March 02, 2025

I had a Cutlass. Man, that thing would haul a**!

Not me driving a 03 Mercedes SUV. It’s our work truck.

I have to give up my 2002 PT Cruiser. I love her simplicity and dread all the automatic stuff and alarms on anything newer.

We’re trying to keep our 20-year-old Toyota going to avoid all the electronic nonsense in today’s cars. It’s got only 199,000 miles on it; nothing for a Toyota.

My husband’s new car does all that nonsense and more. The most irritating thing is there’s no way to turn it off. If the manufacturer would just send a software update allowing us to chose what we like and disable what we hate, it’d be a great car. Especially the coffee thing – why does that pop up after just 20 miles? Seriously???

My Jeep has a hard drive, love it, I can put my music on or an audiobook. I had to have a backup camera installed aftermarket as it didn’t come with one, love that too. The annoying part was the manual is a CD and 90% of it is for the entertainment center. I had to google features like DTE. What is DTE, not in the manual that I could find. Googled! Distance To Empty!! Very handy.

I looked at prices of new trucks and decided to restore my 1998 Dodge Ram 1500. After investing over $10 k, including repainting, I picked it up from the auto body shop and the next morning a twit in a Tesla backed out of a parking space into the side of it as I drove by in a parking lot. When I get the scrape repaired I think I will tell the body shop to go ahead and paint a bullseye on the side of the truck.

My father-in-law is keeping his 12-year old Honda Civic wagon running nicely. It’s got a few bells and whistles like a GPS and heated front seats and a good sound system.

My wife wants me to get rid of my 2006 Porsche Cayenne, and get a Honda Ridgeline. I usually only drive about two day a week less than five miles. Why have car payments on something I won’t drive much?

My truck talks to me too much. The dash can tell me all kinds of things for all kinds of reasons, even have a usb outlet for a keyboard, as if (but texting is illegal, yeah). Too bad it can’t tell me WHICH tire is low, just that there is a low tire. Not a big fan of the newer vehicles (can’t get a manual trans unless I invest my house and life savings into a monster truck that I have no use for). But it’s a beautiful day!

Been seeing articles about a new Toyota truck that they are selling overseas for $10,000. That’s a base model. Can’t sell it in the states due to all the regulations we have.

I have a used 1994 Range Rover. My husband wanted me to have a strong truck to protect me after a serious rear-ender in my new used BMW that I had long for years. So he saw this Range Rover, and after finally figuring out the issues through our mechanic. She’s a beast! I feel very protected with this vehicle. I will drive her until she drops.

My Nissan Sentra is 24 years old. We understand each other so well.

I’m right behind you Al. I’m so done with my nagging new car that thinks I’m on a phone all the time and treats me like an idiot. And I’d give anything to have dials back instead of push button everything.

I had a 1994 Mazda B3000 for many, many years. Only kept up her repairs. Until the mechanics refused to work on her that last time. Forcing me to get a newer vehicle. Which I have now since paid off. Thankfully my DJ doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles.

I don’t need no stinkin’ device to tell me when it’s for coffee, the coffee pot does that.

We rented a 2024 Audi Quattro recently to do a road trip of 800 miles to visit friends on the other side of the state. and I have to say I was impressed. Cruise control that adapted to the speed of the car in front of you, automatic wipers that adjusted the action based on the rain, a navigation system that was accurate to the foot, and other such amenities.

Came back to my Ford Focus and said “oh come on.” Sure it is paid for, and for a 2011 has less than 10K miles on it, but boy you talk about class envy!