Auto Trader

I spent the day at the LA Auto Show. This is my sixth or seventh year where I’ve attended as credentialed media and it’s the first year where I felt like I had a valid plan of attack. I decided to skip the press conferences and to pick one car from each manufacturer to photograph and follow up on at a later date.

The best laid plans…

I have to confess that I got incredibly distracted once I hit the Convention Center floor. There were only three Bentleys and I diligently slobbered over all three of them. I swooned over a Morgan display, ogled the Plus 4 and fell hard for the Callaway Corvette and trucks on display.

I am polyamorous with the cars. I can’t even apologize for it any more.

This year is a good year though. This year I’m looking at cars I love but I’m also looking at cars I might buy. We have two leases ending in just months and to say I’m excited about two new cars is like saying Lady Gaga is slightly eccentric. I am over the moon… except there’s one thing.

Last week I’d decided that I want to keep my car. I cannot tell you how much I love my Lexus. Unfortunately they no longer make the HS so if I want to stay in it I’d need to buy my car at the end of the lease. This is a horrendous fiscal decision that just about everyone regrets but one I’m ready to make because I just love that Lexus so much. Every time I almost run out of gas I giggle because I used to fill up every Friday and now I fill up every two weeks or so, longer if I’ve had a press car. I don’t know how much gasoline costs because it’s not a meaningful part of my budget.

Everything in that car is perfect, except that it’s almost three years old.

So I’m looking at all the hybrids (I’m a hybrid devotee) and there’s a sea of Priuses, a C-Max that I’m dying to really drive and a few options from BMW. Something happened and I was pulled over to Lexus where I was prepared to be disappointed but then the heavens parted, angels played harps, butterflies danced on rainbows and I saw the GS450h. The bamboo trimmed interior made me think of a spa and the 348 hp combined with 34 mpg ratings had me looking for Ashton Kutcher to tell me I’d been punked. There are a zillion details on the GS450h that I’m looking forward to exploring when I finally get behind the wheel and one of them is the triple memory seat. I personally like to use two memory settings for just myself. I sit two basic ways, one with a ponytail, and one without. When my hair is up behind me I need the seat to recline a little further. I have a lot of hair.

There are a few places to eat during press days. My favorite is always Porsche. I’d been there in the morning for a German sausage and fruit cup and on my way out of the show I thought I’d pop into Auto Trader’s media booth for a bottle of water.

I went to walk in and a man in a suit asked me if I was media. I showed him this.

Well, I didn’t show it to him so much as he lifted it up to examine it and he said to me, “This lounge is only for real media.”

I may have stuttered. I didn’t quite know what to say.

“This is only for real journalists.” He repeated and pulled his iPhone out of his pocket (hello irony) to ignore me a while.

I started to walk away when he sort of tsched me. You know that horrible sound that middle school girls do when they don’t like someone. That’s the sound that the Auto Trader guy gave me. I turned around and I was going to say something to him but then he was staring at me again like he hated me.

And this is where I knew I was an adult. I didn’t mention to him that the Auto Trader is no longer in print. I didn’t scream at him about how he didn’t know that media was in his pocket and his grubby hand. I bit my tongue when I saw his cheap suit and bad haircut and I walked away.

I don’t even hate Auto Trader. I just really really dislike that guy.

I guess I’m growing up.