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After eighteen months I was forced to consider my foray into the lifestyle of luxury car ownership a failure. Just after Thanksgiving in 2004 I traded my red 1990 Toyota 4×4 for a black 2001 BMW 330 CCi. It was a gorgeous car. I really, really loved it. It was a sport model and a convertible. The car had every option you could get on a BMW at the time: heated leather seats, six-disc CD changer, the works. The engine purred like a kitten. It handled like a dream. It was, in short, the best vehicle I’d ever owned.

The only real problem with it was the tires. The tires and rims were so sensitive — and the I am so accustomed to driving a truck, and the roads between my office and my home are so often blanketed in construction detritus — that they kept getting destroyed. In a year and a half I had to buy eight $250 tires and five $750 rims! There was just no way I could justify spending more on wheels for my wheels than I was spending on the car itself. I loved it, but it had to go. While driving home from a 4th of July weekend in Palm Springs this year I had a blowout on the highway. It was 114° F and I was so upset I decided it was time to end it.

The next day I strolled into the Marina Del Rey Toyota dealership and traded my baby for a black 2006 Toyota Tacoma 4×4. I could only afford the base model, no bells or whistles. I’m really more of a pick-up man, I guess. I do seriously miss having an intermittent setting on my windshield wipers, though. :0(