My Funny Valentine

Well, Bill went and got a new car; not a new, new car, just new to him. He traded a 2005 Citroen C-4 for a 2008 Citroen Loeb, also a C-4, but a sportier model. The strange thing about this is that it is a diesel sports car. Bill said he’d always laughed at the idea of a diesel sports car until he rode in Simon’s diesel Mini-Cooper. It moves.

I’m not wild about this, I’ll admit; though I’d be the first to say it’s his money and he’s at perfect liberty to do with it exactly as he likes. I just haven’t figured out what was wrong with the last car. I thought Bill was enjoying having an automatic transmission for his hour-or-so commute down to Stockton, on the A-19, a rather nasty highway often with stop-and-start traffic.

However, Bill has changed cars every couple of years since I’ve known him. I can’t begin to list them all. I remember a white Vauxhall when I first met him, which was pretty quick, a big estate car (known in the US as ‘station wagon’), a bouncy Jeep-like thing called a Daihatsu, and the last but one before this, a Citroen C-3 which was very cute but a cross between a standard and an automatic transmission that was weird, maybe even dangerous, to drive.

This car is a funny shape – even Bill says that – and it is fire engine red. I was used to charcoal grey, racing green or a dignified burgundy. I don’t know whether Bill likes it better for the colour or not; I suspect he does as he mentioned to me that it had red seats as well. I notice it also has something like charcoal coloured suede on the upholstery and part of the door panel and it appears that I can choose the temperature of the air that comes out of the vents on my side, which is nifty.

Another of the stranger things about these cars is that they are numbered, like collectable china, and that you can join a club and put a picture of your red Loeb Citroen with its particular number on the internet beside everyone else’s red Loeb Citroens. It’s just about the silliest thing I ever heard of….boys and their toys… mumble… grumble.

All that said, I gather Bill is pleased with his car; he said he was looking around for an ‘interesting’ diesel and these are relatively rare. He will get excellent gas mileage (instead of just really good) for his long commutes. I think the thing that really convinced him that having this car was kismet was finding it mentioned in the Peter Wimsey book he was reading the night before he went to pick it up:

“Well, that’s all, except a fragment consisting of ‘oe’ on one line…”

“Yes, well?...

“Well, I don’t know. Poet, poem , manoeuvre, Loeb edition, Citroen – it might be anything.”

Happy Valentine’s Day, Sweetie!!!

Hope you really enjoy your funny new red car!