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EVERYTHING KING: Car shopping? No donuts or CD players

Wendy is in the market for some new wheels, but as she discusses in this week's column, you may not always get what you used to
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I like to worry in advance. I don’t know why.

My latest concern is how I am going to get what I want/need (or think I do) in a new car.

While we are all worried about paying for the gas we need to run our current vehicle, a new car purchase may be a long way away.

Still, I recently found out a lot of features I considered standard may no longer be.

Did you know most new vehicles don’t come with a spare tire anymore? I would have never thought to ask about that!

According to Consumer Reports, only 10 per cent of vehicles come with the full spare tire. Sixty per cent still have what we used to call the donut. Some other auto companies just send you with a sealing kit to patch your own. Manufacturers say it's because that stuff adds weight to the car, which then cuts down on fuel economy.

What concerns me more is the fact that soon I may not be able to have a CD player. I know I'm a dinosaur, but I like my music the old-fashioned way. I don’t want it on a stick. I don’t want all my music loaded up in one location. I want separate CDs in their plastic holders with liner notes and pictures.

Truth be told, the only time I can really enjoy a lot of my music is on long drives, so if I don’t have that, what in the world will I do with more than a thousand of them?   

I was told I could likely have one installed for a few hundred bucks.

I have even heard cassette tapes are making a return, so maybe if I hold out long enough everything old will be new again...

Even radios aren't necessarily a given anymore! Apparently, auto-makers are rethinking that as well.

I can’t even imagine not having a radio for both company, music, news, and road reports. AM radio is still not being put in some hybrid or electric vehicles.

For radio stations, it bodes well that in a 2021 survey of the Big Three (Ford, GM, Chrysler), 89 per cent of motorists still felt a radio was necessary. I am going to assume it would be similar in Canada.

There have been lots of great features that we all appreciate, such as back-up cameras, power windows and heated seats. There are also new options such as park assist (when a car parallel parks itself) that I can definitely live without. I am not ready to relinquish control to a robot driver.

Good thing is I will never be able to afford an electric car and that’s fine with me. I still can’t trust the technology. Plugging it in seems too Jetsons-like for me.

I also understand that used cars are in huge supply because new cars are on back order. Low supply and high demand are keeping car lots pretty empty these days. According to various dealers, there’s a big shortage on the global semiconductor chip. No idea what that means, but it sounds serious.

So, I guess we all have time to plan and dream and decide on what our next car will be and what we need in it.

You may have a need for speed. Me? I have the need for CD.


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About the Author: Wendy King

Wendy King writes about all kinds of things from nutrition to the job search from cats to clowns — anything and everything — from the ridiculous to the sublime. Watch for Wendy's column weekly.
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