Adios Casper

The only constant in life is things change. Man plans, God laughs.

I bought my Fiat expecting to keep it at least several years. Then 2 months to the day after getting it, my 90-year-old father passed away. I had been caring for him for nearly 5 years and was fully expecting him to hang in there for at least 2 more years.
So now my daily routine has totally changed. After taking care of all the arrangements for his funeral it dawned on me that I could go anywhere I wanted, anytime I wanted. Now the 40 mile radius of the Fiat became an issue, and thanks to insurance policies, I am momentarily flush.
I spent serval weeks considering what better range vehicle to buy. I considered almost everything under $40K, including the Tesla Model 3, my favorite EV. But I couldn’t bring myself to spend that much money on a car. Also Colorado’s auto registrations are based on the vehicle’s MSRP value. So the more your car cost, the more expensive your license plates, and the rates barely drop until the car is 10 years old.
I was looking at EV’s but after watching hours of You Tube videos I came to realize, unless you have a Tesla and access to their charging network, the rest of the charging networks out there are pretty dismal and will not be getting better anytime soon.
Then I started thinking about my daughter’s Honda Clarity, a Plug-in Hybrid, I wondered what other Plug-in Hybrids were out there. After reviewing what cars were available, I decided I liked the 2nd generation Chevy Volt more than the others. 53 miles of pure EV and an additional 350 miles from the 1.5L gas engine. No more range worries.
The Premier version is much better equipped but I didn’t think it was likely that I could find one near me. But fate took a hand. A 2017 Volt Premier with only 27K miles popped up on Cars.com only 6 miles from my house. Well it turned out to be very nice, so I traded in Casper.

I bought the Fiat using my heart, the Volt is more of a head thing. I hope I won’t miss it too much.