BLUE Renew

Yes, it was time to be shaken again. No, I mean SHA-KEN (車検), though "shaken" is a common way to feel during and after the process. It was time to take the BLUE RAV4 in for its mandatory vehicular inspection and all the various tune-ups, adjustments, replacement of parts, financing of fugitive Nigerian royalty, etc. that go to turn an already overpriced bureaucratic hassle into the financial equivalent of sticking your hand into a Cuisinart. Sure, it's cheaper than buying a new car, but since it's something one has to do every two years, well...it does tend to add up.

Basically, you have to take your car to either a mechanic or a dealer. (Doing it yourself ist streng verboten.) They test your car and tune it up until they are confident it will pass the test. Then they truck it to a government testing center located on a moon of one of the gas giants (or so it would seem). If it doesn't pass, it goes back to the garage, and the whole thing gets repeated until the thing DOES pass.

My BLUE RAV4 is nine years old. That's about forty-five years old in Japanese reckoning. And naturally, the older your car, the more bloated the bill gets.

Since I knew it was going to cost a lot anyway, I decided to give my car the works and go for all the options. They really did sock it to it, too. My engine got a thorough cleaning. All the various fluids got replaced. They also replaced my fuses and spark plugs with something a bit less cheez-whizzed. A burnt-out light in my dashboard got fixed up, so now I can read all the switches on the air conditioner at night (though I'd gotten used to doing it all by feel). About the only thing that didn't get replaced was my tires (which have wound up being part of shaken in the past...much to my chagrin). I also went for the maintenance pack option, which added about a third to the price, but at least I get free tune-ups and oil/brake fluid changes at intervals until the next shaken.

One nice thing was that I got a real cool loaner for the two-day period. It was a Toyota Auris, which was apparently developed by Toyota UK as a replacement for the venerable Corolla. I got an Auris when I had my last shaken done in 2007, it was a baseline version, and I wasn't all that impressed. This time I got a brand new 2009 model with some options attached, and it was loads of fun! It's not a big car, but the interior is roomy (at the expense of cargo space), and I liked its design. The one I got was a 1500 cc model (There is also an 1800 cc version), which has a smaller engine than my RAV4, but it accelerated quickly and had nice, punchy handling. Another cool feature was that funky "smart key", the first I'd ever experienced. It never came out of my pocket. As long as it was on my person, I was able to lock and unlock the doors from outside the car with a touch, and starting and stopping the engine was done by pressing a button on the dashboard. I'm certainly not getting rid of my BLUE machine anytime soon, but the 2009 Auris was kind of fun to drive for a while. Besides...my wife has been talking about getting a new car...

I also couldn't help noticing that the Pruis is on sale right now and therefore available at a substantial markdown...

Naturally, the car shop person kept reminding me that, as part of the shaken package, a new car purchase in the near future would be at a substantial discount.

Oh, well. At least I got this biannual ordeal out of the way. As usual, my car came back with noticeably less power (kind of like when one passes the DEQ inspection back home in Oregon), but it's running smoother, sounds nicer, and looks all nice and sparkly BLUE. Besides, I can read all the buttons on the dashboard for the first time in at least a couple of years!