david-s.net - David Schlosnagle's Words, Photos, and Links

Well, today is my one month anniversary with my new baby. I always swore I wouldn’t buy an I4, but this car was just too good to pass up. Anyone that knows me, knows that my dream car is the E46 BMW M3, but right now that’s a bit out of my price range. Therefore, when my old car (1994 Eagle Vision) started hacking up a lung earlier this year, I started researching new cars. I would have loved to buy a new 330ci, but I couldn’t justify spending that much on a car at this point in my life. There was no way I was going to buy an American designed/made car after the horrific reliability problems of my last car. I looked at the Accord, but it just didn’t win me over. I liked the Infiniti G35 and Lexus IS300, but they were still a fair bit more than I wanted to spend.

I kept visiting the Acura website and reading about the TSX and eventually sold myself on the car. It has almost everything I could possibly want, amazingly well engineered and built by Honda in Japan, so it is made to last. The only thing that I wasn’t sure about was the 2.4-liter I4 and its 166 ft.-lb. of torque. Test driving it took away all of my concerns, along with 200 horsepower. Once I was sold on it, I was ready to buy, unfortunately there were no Arctic Blue Pearl TSXs with 5 speed automatic transmission and navigation in the state of Pennsylvania. Through the wonders of the internet, I found out that there just happened to be not one, but two Arctic Blue Pearl TSXs with 5-speed automatic transmission and navigation at a dealership in Chantilly, Virginia, the largest Acura dealership in the country. This dealership also happened to be less than 10 minutes from my new apartment in Fairfax, VA. So I made a phone call and put a hold on the car, something that the incompetent Baierl Acura seemed unable to do, and took my old Eagle down for a trip to Virginia. The poor thing barely made it to the dealership with the scorching heat and an aging transmission.

Fast-forward a month, and my new baby has almost 1600 miles on her. I broke her in on highway trips from Fairfax, VA » Pittsburgh, PA » State College, PA » Pittsburgh, PA » Fairfax, VA and all over Northern Virginia. The navigation system is amazing around here. I’ve been riding and driving around Pittsburgh my entire life, but now I’m in a completely new world in Virginia. All I have to do is punch in an address, or place name, restaurant, or gas station, and I can find my way around. I try not to rely on it too much and it has helped me learn many new back roads that I never would have known exist. The best part of all this driving is that I now average around 30 miles per gallon, and I now only have a 5 minute drive to work, so she gets to rest a little before her next trip up to Penn State for Arts Fest in July.

Speaking of well designed products, Apple’s iPod meets BMW with their new controller for 2002+ BMWs and 3rd generation iPods. I love my iPod and have been planning on integrating it with the steering wheel controls, and I think I’ve finally found the system to do it. Check out another TSX that has installed this system already.