The G Has Arrived

After waiting nearly six weeks--which seemed like forever--I brought the G20 home to Salem on Tuesday night, where it will graciously wait it out in our third bay for the next year while I finish serving my time driving Alice the Ugly White Corolla, after which Meg intends to give the Corolla to her brother Paul once he returns from his missionary service in Ghana. The seller finally found a newer Infiniti G20 that he liked, so he was finally able to officially sell me his older G20.

The Ducks game was essentially over at halftime, so I listened to the final 30 minutes it in the garage while I worked on cleaning the G20's interior. The carpets were extremely soiled, but I spent a few hours making them respectable. The leather seats are in decent condition for a 14 year old car, but unfortunately my cleaning and conditioning efforts didn't appear to do much to their appearance or feel--maybe after a few more times and some better chemicals I'll see a difference. I'm going to have my friend Greg help me clean the engine bay, and in a couple of weeks I'll restore the exterior paint with a good washing, claybar, and waxing job--which I've heard can make the car look as good or even better than when the original owner drove it off the stealership's lot.

Unfortunately, our digital camera broke this week (although Canon will fix it for free since it is a defect on their end), so I can't share any pictures for a while. But the car is forest green with beige interior, five-speed manual, 121k miles, sunroof that works ok (doesn't quite open all the way), spoiler, all leather interior, power seats/windows/mirrors/locks, keyless entry (doesn't work, but probably just needs re-programming when the seller finds and sends the remote unit to me), relatively new tires and clutch. This has been the cheapest vehicle Meg or I have ever bought, but I'm still very excited to have it. It's a superb driving machine; it has 140 hp inline 4-banger engine and handles better than any car I've driven. And it should average 30 miles per gallon overall, which is just a little worse than the Corolla, even though the engine is much more powerful.