I live in a neighborhood of large, turn of the century (1900 not 2000) homes, most converted into apartments. From my kitchen window I can see down the backyards of my neighbors and each has its own large garage at the rear of their yards. There is a two story brick garage with a green tile roof, a stucco garage with diamond-paned leaded glass windows and a 1.5 story, three car garage with a loft. Not carriage houses exactly but very nice small buildings. In practically any other country these would be desireable buildings to live in. Here they are occupied by cars.

Yesterday I leased a new car in spite of my earlier stated plan to avoid doing so. I’m on a tighter budget these days and the nature of my last lease deal made it a financial no-brainer to just get another car and continue my plan. I drove an Accord (bigger, more boring and less mileage than my 2005 Accord), a Fit (cool little van-like Euro-Honda, 25/35 MPG) and a Civic which I liked best and which, surprisingly, got the best mileage (25/36).

The nature of leasing is that the estimated value of the car at the end of the lease or the ‘residual’ value determines how good a deal you get. The Civic had the best residual, cost about the same, after haggling, as the Fit and was the nicest to drive between the two more efficient cars. The Fit was underpowered but had tons of space. I liked the Civic’s car-ness better.

I’ve never been less excited about buying a new car. Nothing against the cars but it was a choice made for purely financial reasons. I would have just as soon kept driving the Accord but it would have cost me too much in the short term to do so. These are the choices I have to make these days.

So I’m driving the new car home from the dealer which is out there in one of those automall strips you find all over the country. About 1pm on a Monday. Traffic is bumper to bumper and I can’t see a single vehicle with more than one occupant. Our dependence on oil couldn’t be more pronounced. One person per car and each car gets its own nice house. That’s America for you.

And I was alone in my car too. No nice house, just a parking space…