First Impressions

The much awaited day has come. I first spied it through the big glass walls of the showroom. Whew, my ride was going to be an elegant black sedan. Thank God it's not some bright red set of wheels. After going through the checklist and signing off on the loan form, I sat inside the driver's seat and fired up the engine. The dashboard lighted up like a plane's cockpit, and there were graduated white on the dials on the instrument board. The dashboard was black with brushed metal. It gives a very futuristic and masculine feel. With the embedded volume, cruise control, and I believe the other two pointed controls may be manual gear shifts over-rides on the steering wheel, I feel as though I was seated within an Autobot.

The first thing I did was to try to adjust the seat, groping around fruitlessly below the front of the seat. Though the seat adjustment bar was visible on the front passenger's seat, I realized that the driver's seat was possibly more sophisticated. Sure enough, there were some levers on the side of the driver's seat. Initially I wondered if they would work if the ignition was off. (They did.)

I tried to adjust the mirrors. I got to expand the closed up side mirrors, but couldn't figure out how to make further adjustments to the side mirrors from the single dial that could turn to the left and right. I tried to look for the car's manual in the glove compartment but it was not there. I went back to the showroom and asked for it. As it was past 5pm, many people had left the office and it could not be found. After maybe 10-15 min, they finally found one for me. That will be the night reading material for the next few days. Meanwhile I asked the staff to teach me how to use some of the sophisticated parking light and various functions on the driver's side which were new to me. (Yes, I was also shown how the mirror's joystick worked.)

Next was a quick drive to buy some dinner. During the short drive, I found that the steering wheel was too low and as I turned the steering wheel, my hands knocked onto my knees. The top part of the steering wheel also obscured the top part of the readings from the dashboard. I will need to fix that in the carpark. At the carpark, I tried to find something that showed where I could adjust the height of the steering wheel. But in my preliminary checks, I couldn't find anything on this. So I worked on another premise -- that I could change the seating height instead. It worked, but the seat adjustment also affected the seat back's incline. More tweaks were needed before it felt right.

After returning to the car with the food, I thought it'll be a good chance to see how the car could bring these takeaway meals back in a secure fashion without any additional car accessories (I used to add various hooks behind the front seats to hold such plastic bags).

Now there was a boot open button on the remote control, but it didn't seem to work. There was also another boot release button in the car. It too didn't seem to work either as I saw that the boot still seem to be closed. Then I started the engine, and pressed the button again. It opened.. I think.. as it still looked closed from the rear view mirror. I got out of the car to check. Yes, it was indeed opened, and there were convenient hooks on the inside of the boot near the lid for one to hook these packets of food too. Nice touch! Thus far this was only the second saloon car I had driven that came with these hooks, unlike the hooks-a-plenty of an SUV. When I reached home, I removed the key from the ignition, and tried both the boot release from the remote and the button inside the car. Both were unresponsive. Very strange. I will need to investigate this further tonight.

I look forward to getting to know this "Optimus Prime" more in the next days to come.