2023.07.30 It's FORZA's Fault, Really

Amy's main gift for her birthday this year was an XBOX, and she didn't want to wait for her actual birthday to start playing with it. So last week we broke it out after we dropped off the kids with their mom, and proceeded to play a whole bunch of video games. I've never had any kind of console game system myself, so it has been hilariously intoxicating to play with Amy on a bunch of games in our living room. A couple are throwbacks to my PC simulation games of yore, a hilariously frustrating puzzle game, and a couple driving games. The stand-out driving game we got was Forza 5.

We started calling playing Forza "drunk driving" both because of how bad at it we are with the basic game controllers, but also because it was funny to take turns playing while also sipping alcoholic beverages. The game is simply beautiful, with a rather good physics engine, so it's enjoyable to feel immersed in the wildly bad driving experience. Perhaps exactly because of how bad we were at controlling the vehicles meant that we often found ourselves off-road, which in turn lent itself to having better experiences with the off-road-capable vehicles. The early champion of this realm is the Ford Bronco that you start the game in.

So much fun was had tromping around in this virtual Bronco that we asked ourselves, "what would driving a real Bronco be like?" So, for shits and giggles, we set out last Friday to the local Ford dealer to take a Bronco out for a turn behind the real wheel. It did not disappoint - we both liked it a lot.

Except for, you know, reality - the price, the fuel efficiency, and the overall poor ability to meet our second vehicle needs. But while there on the Ford lot, we found ourselves facing the truth that we were sick of dealing with shitty old cars. We have most of what we wanted to have saved up for the ID.Buzz already, so starting to have a payment now could be handled without difficulty. Plus, we could trade in the hard-to-sell T4 van for sufficient downpayment on whatever we decided made sense.

After staring into the abyss of Ford offerings, we toddled over to the nearby VW dealer to see about their inventory of ID.4's. Because they share the basic architecture with the ID.BUZZ that we intend to have, so it could be an opportunity to get familiarized with that. And it just so happened that they had a lease deal that would carry us nicely until we get project:LEELOO¹.

And here we are, with yet another vehicle.

Now all we have to do is:

• Sell the stupid Flex.
• Install a 2" hitch to attach the bike rack.
• Get a home charging solution that doesn't suck.²

¹ "project:LEELOO" is the provisional ID.BUZZ name - so far
² The car comes with 3 years free charging at Electrify America, so this is actually a somewhat lower-priority need.