Today, I am driving Mr. Sweetie's car. It's a sleek and compact little number, with a leather interior and ergonomic seating. It's a great car to ride in. To drive? Not so much. Mostly because everything is just a little bit different than my Venerable Honda, and because Mr. Sweetie is so much taller than I am, so I have to adjust everything before I can even reach the pedals.

Today, I noticed all the stuff that is high tech in this car--higher tech than in the Venerable Van. The stereo comes on automatically when you turn on the ignition, but at a subsonic volume. Fortunately! there is a stereo control right on the steering wheel, so you don't even have to take your hands off the wheel to adjust volume, station, or CD.

It gives you the outdoor temperature digitally. Not to any fractions of degrees, although that is probably an available option. So, when it's hot outside, you know EXACTLY how hot it is. It's even worse in the winter to know EXACTLY how cold it is.

You get a gas mileage readout. Today it showed me how far I could go on the amount of gas in the gas tank: 360 miles. Sometimes it shows how many miles per gallon you can get at the particular speed you are driving: always a laugh at stop lights.

It has the time AND THE DATE. Which is digitally updated, so you can see when exactly July 4th becomes July 5th. Whether or not that is meaningful in a car.

It's a bit of a noodge too--a nagging nanny. Low on wiper fluid? Ding ding ding ding periodically until you refill the dang reservoir. Low on gas? Nanny Noodge to the rescue. Seatbelt not on? Hair not combed? Okay, not that last one.

The headlights and wipers come on automatically when the sensors detect dim light or rain. I mean, really! The sensitivity of these sensors is amazing--I went into the garage this bright sunny morning, and before I was all the way in, the headlights were on. Nobody spat on the windshield, though, so I can't report on the wipers.

Start the car, put it into gear, and before you have fully pulled away from your parking spot, the doors have automatically locked. Odometer and trip odometer are separate, so you can track a particular length of trip at your choice.

But speed?

Oh yeah, speed.

Well, contrary to all the technical and digital LCD displays, speed is on an old fashioned analog dial. One with approximations of the speed. The actual mph are only picked out in twenty mile an hour increments, so you can really only know that you are going, say, somewhere between 40 and 60 mph. There are some intervening lines, that signal something approaching 30 or 35 miles an hour, but exact speeds, unlike exact temperatures or dates, are not available.

I would say something scathing at this point, but it seems the car can read my mind. Because as I was contemplating this fact, tooling down the highway at something like 15 mph over the speed limit, and getting passed by everybody, I heard the car respond. Not a real voice, but a voice in my head.

It spoke with a heavy Arnold Schwartzenegger accent.

"Don't be a girlie mon. Zis ees a Gzherman car. Eet goes fast!"