Technology Spencer on August 2, 2006 01:49 pm
Total Geek Item for Cars
Greetings all,
Ok, I finally paid off my Saturn, and while I love the car and feel I have the last manual transmission in the United States, I’m jonesing for a new car. I don’t need a new car, and I certainly don’t mind what I’m driving, except I love the little information gauges you can get in luxury cars. I’m talking about really cool things like MPG, Average MPG, Miles left in tank, Gallons left, Extra trip odometers, etc. I had all of this in my rental car (Mercury Grand Marquis, baby blue, perfect for retirement area Florida) and loved it even for just the two days I had the car.
So, this made me start looking for cars with this kind of information. I’ve given up the idea of a navigation system… I hardly drive anywhere new so I really don’t need one. I don’t need a new radio/CD player as mine is just fine and I don’t care for the XM or Sirius which tends to come with the navigation features anyway. However, the Driver Information Center (GM’s term for these nifty features) is available on a Chevrolet Impala. Hmm… a nice, new, fairly affordable Impala sounds really nice and the new design is pretty sleek as well. Sounding better.
But, do I really want to chain myself down with another car payment just to get these nifty features and lose the manual transmission? Hmm… there has to be a better way; someone somewhere has to make an after-market gauge that can keep track of these things. During my lunch break, I decided to search for such an item expecting to find a whole bunch of them. Alas, I only found one, and it’s not cheap at $170, but for a computer geek who likes to know weird things about driving statistics, this fits the bill.
It’s called the ScanGauge II and it has everything I mentioned above and even more than that. This thing totally looks like the way to go. ($170 is a lot cheaper than $27,000) I’ll have to think about it and then find a place where I would actually put the thing that would work in my car. Another nifty feature, supposedly coming out soon is the ability to upload the data to a computer. That would probably just about send the wife packing, huh honey? 
I’ll let you know if I get it and if I do, how it works out. Have a great day!
