Considering that my past cars have included three VW busses, two '68 Camaros ( a white one and a red one ),an '87 Mazda RX7 (six years) pic 1, pic 2, pic 3, and a '93 Nissan 300ZX (five years) pic 1 pic 2 many people find it strange that I traded in my BMW for a Honda Civic Hybrid. Therein lies a tale: After Coleridge was born I realized it was time to trade in the two-seater sportscar for something responsible. After much research I settled on a BMW, partly for the prestige but more for the safety aspects. I ended up purchasing a 2000 323i . It was a nice car, to say the least. Everywhere I went the car attracted the gaze of people. But after a few months I began to realize that for all the "luxury" it was really nothing more than an instrument of transportation - and a very expensive one at that. Soon came the impending war in Iraq. I slapped a "No Blood for Oil" sticker on the Beemer but soon came to feel hypocritical about it. I mean, here I was driving a gas guzzling, foreign made luxury automobile while I was bemoaning this country's dependance on and aspirations for the world's oil reserves. So after a year I sold the BMW to CarMax (taking a loss of $8000) and bought a 2003 Civic Hybrid. It was one of the best decisions of my life. A couple of years later the new Prius came out and I was immediately compelled by the better gas mileage it promised. So, I jumped on a 2005 maroon Toyota Prius and loved every minute of it. I especially enjoyed the challege of earning the highest MPGs with each tank of gas. A couple of years after that I decided to upgrade my Prius and bought... yes, another Prius. This one was gray, had a sweet Bose sound system, an awesome navigation system, and keyless entry. And even better gas mileage.