ersatz

So the time came for another oil change for the Lexus, and I made an appointment to drop it off in the morning. I also had a few issues with the driver's seat making creaking noises and with the brake pads making too much dust causing the front wheels to look constantly dirty, and there are actually documented TSBs (Technical Service Bulletins) from the manufacturer on these. You can look them up for your car on a site like Alldata or search the forums on a car enthusiast site like ClubLexus.com. Anyways I dropped it off and because it would take several hours to check those issues out as well as do the oil change, they gave me a loaner car.

I was hoping they'd give me a nice Lexus ES350 or an RX350 (the wifey has been wanting one of those) to play around with, but you can imagine my dismay when they said they were out of Lexus loaners that morning. Instead I found myself behind the wheel of ... a base-model Toyota Camry. A dark red one, to boot. Oh joy. And there was an added bonus: firing up the ignition, the most fantastic music blared out of the MP3 stereo system. Some kind of Pakistani pop-techno mix CD, left behind by the previous occupant. Spectacular. So I set off on my way to work, floating my way onto the highway and putting the pedal to the floor, listening to the 4-cylinder engine's wail as the automatic transmission vaguely hunted around between 3rd, 4th and 5th gear. The beats were bumping, sitars playing, vocalists moaning and chanting to the beat, it was good times. But it got even better, because whoever made the CD just couldn't make up their mind -- it went from Pakistani techno to Chris Daughtry to some hard core rap and hip hop all in the blink of an eye.

In some kind of morbid curiousity I had to keep listening, to see what was going to play next. At lunchtime my coworkers commended me on my music choice, to which I had to respond, I had no idea who it even was. It certainly wasn't music representative of the typical Lexus driver demographic, that's for sure. I got one of the Lexus music CDs they give out, it was all jazz and easy listening. No hip hop or techno there.

At the end of the day I took the Camry back to the dealer and traded it for my beloved IS350, freshly washed and gleaming in the dealer lot. But not before ejecting that crazy MP3 CD -- I'm not gonna miss that Camry at all, but I'm taking the beats with me.