Oh hey, who is this in our tiny driveway? A new and fancy friend, imported from the great city of Oakland by way of Arizona and your name is 2014 Subaru Outback.

Jetta TDI Sportwagen lives quietly in the top of the driveway, awaiting it’s sad death row fate in October. We loved you Jetta TDI Sportwagen, but you made us sad when your CEO got arrested for duping the entire world of your excellent dieselness. Your lovely 45 mpg gallons, in your sporty fast car body that held my dog crates oh so perfectly is changing the climate horribly every single time I start the engine.

Then your catalytic converter broke which started causing even more pollution, that I see wafting out of the tailpipe in the back window every time I drive you, causing you to get shitty gas mileage and be about to die at any time, but costing $3000 to fix you. So I drove you and killed trees and waited for you to die because I was not willing to pay that sum to save your life, because you were killing polar bears.

But you got a settlement, or you are about to get one, and I parked you in a nice resting place while I wait for the settlement, and went out interviewing your replacements at used car meat markets. Maybe it’s a rebound car, I got it because every single person on my whole street has one, and on your bountiful and long tv commercials smiling farmers with border collies drive one and happy people going camping and kayaking on dirt roads with dogs bounding out the boot drive one, in their fleecey jackets and glowing skins. So many dogs and outdoorsy folk on your commercials, with modest hair cuts and goretex footwear. So I got one too.

You are only 2.5 years old, and you have many fancy buttons everywhere that do a lot of high pockety things. You beep at me when I drive bad. You are so big that I can put groceries inside you with 4 dog crates and probably other large objects except for costco toilet paper packs, I don’t know where those will fit for the next dog show because my giant rooftop tupperware bin doesn’t have a rack yet to ride on. You have leather seats, I am sitting on sad dead cows that died a horrible death to become car seats, but they are so very soft with many buttons to mold them to my ass. You don’t go all that fast, but you are supposed to save me from death in the next wet storm I drive you in. Your stereo is amazing, and you have a little sky hatch. Most amazingly, when the money from Germany comes in, you will be payment free and I can spend all my money on gas for you, because you get 30mpg when you try your hardest.

Welcome to team small dog, 2014 Subaru Outback. You are a bit of a douchey car for old ladies, and will probably cause me great embarrassment off and on unless I just get over that fact. But you also won’t scrape your stomach when I drive you on rutted roads. And you have faux wood trim inside you that I enjoy, even though it’s just a plastic strip made in China. I lean back when I drive you, and speak on the phone, and I will revel in the fact that I have succumbed to marketeers far more clever than I, but who will keep me and all the dogs safe in my road warrior ways.