With my RX8 lease ending I had to find myself a new car. I actually found this quite tricky, given our list of requirements...

• automatic, so that Liz could use it to learn
• manual look-a-like, so I can pretend I'm not driving an automatic!
• five doors, for easy access with Edward and to the boot for all of his stuff
• reasonable size boot, for all of Edward's stuff
• within budget
• "nice", to drive and look at
• keyless/hands free entry and driving

After much browsing and pondering I got around to test driving a couple of cars.

First was the Toyota Auris, which was OK but nothing exciting. The automatic/manual gearbox also wasn't great, generally giving rough changes, although they could be smoothed out a bit once you knew when they were coming.

Second was the Honda Civic. This was much more impressive - fantastic looking dashboard, amazing internal space, although fairly small back doors. Sadly still fairly rough gear changes (although better than the Auris). I couldn't decide if I like the external look either.

After finally deciding to go for the Civic, I found that it didn't actually meet the budget requirement. Generally speaking most cars that sell for about 20k can be leased for about £300/month (or hopefully slightly less). But the best I could find the Civic for was around £350/month. :-(

So back to the drawing board.

At this point I decided to drop my desire to have a (pretend) manual gearbox, as I didn't really need it and it narrowed the options a lot. Having looked at the huge key that you get with the Auris to provide hands free entry I also gave up on my hope of avoiding keys (as a lump the size of the Auris key wouldn't fit anywhere more convenient than a normal key anyway).

After some more browsing, pondering and running out of time, I test drove a Toyota Prius.

This had the advantage of not only being leasable at quite a good price (£260/month) but also coming with the promise of saving on fuel bills (being a hybrid and all). It's not perfect on looks, but at least it does come with a touch screen display that shows which engine you're using (petrol or electric)!

It's also stupidly easy to drive. It literally has two gears, forwards and reverse (hmm, and parked), it doesn't even have 1st/2nd like most automatics. Plus as a bonus the "key" is actually a small lump that you insert into the dashboard before pressing the on switch. Not quite hands free, but a good step in the right direction.

So with an acceptable choice and no more time to look, I now have a shiny Toyota Prius...