I Want A Smart Car!

So yesterday I went to Richmond for the fourth fifth time in my life¹, despite having lived in Vancouver for almost seven years. More specifically, I went to the Richmond Auto Mall to help my friend Sasha buy a car, hers having been stolen last week³. First of all, I'd like to say that I hate salesmen. This one guy was totally trying to put on the pressure to get Sasha to buy a car right then and there and was totally playing around with the numbers to try to convince her (and even tried to argue that he wasn't playing with the numbers when he was called on it). She, however, had already decided not to rush into anything and knew going in that she wasn't going to be driving off the lot in a new car, no matter what! On the plus side, his dragging out of the "negotiations" for the car she never bought meant that we got to sit in the nice air conditioned dealership for longer - it's still ridiculously hot out!

On the minus side⁴, I've fallen in love with the Smart Car. They get ridiculously good mileage (they run on diesel), are surprisingly safe for their size, would be super easy to park and, despite how small they look from the outside, they do have enough storage space for my hockey equipment (which is my one and only requirement for a car, truth be told). And they are so damn cute! Anyone out there in blogland have any opinions about the Smart Car?

Oh ya, while we were looking at the cars, I noticed an odd item listed as one of the features of a particular car⁵:

... tethers for children?

¹not counting times I've been to the Vancouver airport which, while techincally in Richmond, doesn't really count
²the other three four times include: (1) going to Shalu's house in Richmond after her mom picked us up at the airport when we came back from San Francisco, (2) going to a lab Holiday party at a bowling alley, followed by dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory, (3) for my recent trip to Seattle we stopped in Richomond on the way back to go to the Garage outlet, which turned out to be not open. Stupid Richmond. Update 17/07/2007: talking with Shalu yesterday, she reminded me of another time I'd been in Richmond - a party at a lab tech's house.
³Sasha is the second person from our softball team to have their car stolen this summer. Car theives suck.
⁴I say the "minus" side because it's a lot of money and I know that if I buy a car, I'll have less cash to do fun things. It would suck to buy a car on the premise that it fits my hockey gear, but then not be able to afford to play hockey!
⁵My apologies for the crappiness of this photo. It's always on the one day that I don't bring my camera with me that I end up having something I want to take a photo of! So I used my camera phone which is, clearly, not ideal. I also took a picture of a drive-through liquor store (only in the 'burbs, man, only in the 'burbs), but it came out so fuzzy you can't even tell what it is, so I'm not bothering to post it).