Thursday 02/04/2021
About the only thing of note today was that I got the Prius serviced. And for an additional $400, I had a catalytic converter anti-theft plate installed on the bottom of the car. Although I park in a secure garage, there will be times when I go somewhere and park on the street, maybe during a concert — yes, someday I expect to attend concerts and plays again — and I don’t have to worry about coming back to the car and having the sound of an open exhaust. And although I do carry comprehensive insurance with a $100 deductible, so it wouldn’t cost me $3000, a stolen “cat” still takes the car out of service for a day or two and is just very angering.
I thought about taking a fat sharpie and writing something rude on the shiny new plate that runs across between the frame rails. Like “suck it, asshole”. But that might be misunderstood by legitimate mechanics. Or it might inspire a frustrated cat thief to key the car as he left.
I measured the distance to the dealer on google maps; it was 3.6 miles. So I drove down and walked back. There was a nice almost 4 miles (by the end of the day), done. At 2pm when Wanda came to do my room, I called up a Lyft for the return trip. This was the first Lyft I’d had in a year.
I took a look at the current Prius Prime (the equivalent of my plug-in, with 20 miles of battery before the ICE kicks in). A very friendly salesman said he would get me an estimate on the trade-in value of my (very clean, low-mileage) 2012 Plug-in. Later he called me to say that his manager actually was the salesman who sold us the 2012, and remembers it and us. I don’t know if that’s baloney; it was one of the first Plug-ins they handled so maybe he remembers it. More likely he just looked it up in the dealership sales file. Type the license plate into his computer, boom.
Anyway, said manager now thinks it would be worth $7500 for trade-in. That’s rubbish. I know they are going for $9000 and up. I told the friendly salesman I would probably not be buying until the pandemic was over and I could actually drive anywhere. “Call me around Thanksgiving,” I said, and he said he would.
Codgerville 