VTAY Visits Volvo and Volkswagen

The awesome dinner of salmon and prawns cooked by Gam (brown rice and salad by Sarah).

Today Sarah and I set off to check out a couple of car dealers, after having a fight over whether we were going to go or not (sorry darling). I've finally got my marks back and graduated, so I'm in the market for a job, and most of the community health-type jobs require a car. Our initial thought was to pick up a second-hand Golf, but after reading some terrifying statistics on used cars in Queensland and noting that all the second-hand late model Golfs were manuals and not much cheaper than buying brand new we decided to check out the dealership. We figured if we bought new it'll last us through at least our first kid, too. Our parents were planning on helping us out with a certain amount for the used cars, and we figured we could put down that amount as a deposit and get finance on the rest. Anyway, on the plus side we're back to full fitness because we walked a couple of km arguing flat out.

The Volvo C30

We went in to the valley, taking the train from Toowong. We went into the Volvo dealership first to have a look at the C30. We walked in and every customer in there was over 30. Grey heads swiveled in our direction. There was one couple in their late 30s, obviously dressed up for the occasion. The older salesmen looked at us like we must be lost and in there by mistake. Eventually a nice young salesman detached himself from a departing couple and glided over to us. We asked questions about finance etc. and asked for a tour of the vehicle so we could check it out in the flesh. He was polite but it was obvious that he'd decided from how we were dressed (exercise clothes) that we weren't able to buy the car. The C30 was nice, a kind of young person's Volvo. It's strictly a 4 seater and the boot space was a little small. It had a sexy centre console on the dashboard though, as well as keyless entry and drive and an aux input for the stereo. It wasn't quite fuel efficient or spacious enough for us, though the driver and front passenger had heaps of room. We picked up a couple of cards and brochures and walked the km or so to the Volkswagen dealer down the road, passing by Space (interior design store that some of our friends got us a voucher for as a wedding present) and making a note to head in on the way back.

VW Golf GTi

We got to VW dealer and the first people we see are a guy and girl in thongs and shorts. Our kinda place. We walked in the place looked like a buzzing restaurant. There was a little breakfast nook with free drinks, a coffee maker and a sink, and lots of couches and comfortable seats for customers. We checked in at the reception and were put on the list by a very nice receptionist. We sat down at the drinks counter and waited for a bit. While we waited we were reassured by a couple of salespeople that someone would get to us, it was nice to not be forgotten. Most of the people there weren't dressed up, like at Volvo, and there were about 20 customers and their kids there, as opposed to the 4 or 5 overdressed middle-aged types at the Volvo dealer. We hopped up and cruised around, stopping to look at a golf 2.0 TDI. We opened the boot. Massive. Way bigger than the C30. Same with the passenger section. Also 4 doors instead of 2. Then a salesman, Christopher, came up to help us. We asked about finance again (he was shocked at how much we wanted to put up as a deposit and tried to sell us a much more expensive car, the R32 [want... want now...] which we couldn't afford) and got him to show us around the golf GTi and the golf GT. We trundled along and sat in a GTi. The front seats have side bolsters that make you feel glued to the car and an excellent driving position, and again, huge inside. The boot looked easily twice as big as the C30, and had pop out rings for luggage straps. It got better when you folded down the back seats. Masses of room.

All the while, Chris was trying to sell me on power, barely mentioning the car's safety specs. He went on about how they were real goers and fun to drive [especially when you're out on a straight stretch of road "and you know there's no radar"... He couldn't believe that neither of us were interested in the car for its 'performance'! -S], almost reluctantly switching to fuel efficiency (excellent, especially for the 1.4 TSI) and how they handled long trips (pretty well, especially with that boot space etc. He showed us the key fob for the cars. You can lock the car, lock the car and roll up the windows and unlock it/unlock it and roll down the windows (for hot days) before you get to the car. Not quite keyless entry/drive like the Volvo, but pretty sweet. By then we were sold on the Golf. It looks like a very useful, practical sort of car.

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Sarah's segment:

After that, we walked to Space. When our friend Amelia (one of the group of friends who bought us the voucher as a wedding present) asked the other day if we'd visited Space yet, we said we hadn't but had in mind some office chairs, as ours are pretty old and scungy. She joked that at Space we'd perhaps be able to afford half a chair with our voucher. I suppose the fact that their website had no prices on the items should have clued us in, but we'd never been to an real-life designer furniture store. There were two Porsche Cayennes (those hideous 4WDs that cost over $100 000) in the parking lot, along with a bunch of other expensive-looking cars and a lone Mitsubishi. The 20-something girl at the front desk was incredibly dismissive and obviously thought we had no place being there. The middle-aged sales-guy was much more polite and helpful and looked after us rather well despite us showing up in t-shirts, shorts and joggers- if he judged us by our appearance then he never showed it. We decided that our friend Nic, a graphic designer who is a bit of a design-whore and covets things like Eames chairs, was probably responsible for the idea. We can now blame him for making us lust after all sorts of furniture items we should never have even known existed. The office chair that came in two versions- one with a name something along the lines of 'el Presidente', with bright yellow leather that we'd seen on the website was not in stock, which was just as well, as the sales-guy quoted us roughly $7000 for it: the chair would be hand-made in Italy and shipped to Australia, which would take 4 months. We could choose from any of 150 different colours. If we could afford it, that is.

Apparently this was designed in the 1980s- a real 'power-chair'. I think the yellow leather was what suckered me in.

The difference between Space and another outrageously priced store full of designer stuff, say Louis Vuitton, is that the prices, while prohibitive, were not off-putting because the stuff is actually nice, not just crap that's desirable because it's so expensive it becomes 'exclusive'. That's fucking scary. The stuff is so nice that we were calculating how many pay cheques it would take to pay for this and that...
Gam coveted a $4000 couch... or was it $8000? When it's that far out of your price-range you don't tend to take that much notice (not a proper couch, mind- one of those would probably be much more expensive!) 'perfect for gaming', the salesman said, that had the option of two little seats that looked like a cross between a pouf and a very shapely beanbag (not the most flattering description, but they could accurately be described as round, simple, neat and comfortable) that cost $1000 each (!!!) to accompany it. Update: I found a picture:



I coveted every colourful perspex item in the store. 24 years old, with the tastes of a 9-year-old... I bought some 'jelly' sandals on special in the city a couple of weeks ago- fluoro pink and green so I could wear a different colour on each foot- and while in Milton with Gam's sister we saw a girl around 9 or 10 years old wearing the same shoes in yellow (she took note of the different coloured sandals on my feet and looked like she was plotting to ask her mother to buy her another pair so she could do the same thing!).

This is something the Space website refers to as 'the lily chair'- when I saw it in the store it reminded me more of one of those ridiculous court-jester hats you see pictured in old fairytales... while kind of hideous, unfortunately it was faultlessly comfortable (I couldn't help trying it out!).

While we could actually have afforded a perspex stool (or even two!) with our voucher, the best perspex chairs cost twice as much as the voucher [Note: after browsing the Space website, it appears that nearly all the chairs I liked were by Phillipe Starck. No wonder they were obscenely expensive!]. That's about the time we started plotting how many weeks it would take saving a salary we don't yet have to pay for all the items we wanted. Madness. Sheer madness.

The chair I actually coveted was blue- sorry, 'cobalt', but 'light yellowish green' sounds like it would complement blue pretty well... hmmm... But what happens when your pretty $800 chair gets scratch-marks all over it? Just throw it out and spend $800 on a new one? I'm not really cut out for this game...

The front-desk girl was duly snobby as we exited the store, and we made a mental note that when we do come back to buy something we'll make a point of dressing as shabbily as we can manage without actually looking homeless before forking out for something expensive. Fucking retail workers who look down on people because they dress 'poor'. I'll be buying stuff from Cotton On and wearing my grotty Nike Frees even when I'm salaried up, thankyou very much.

I think if you were to sit on these in the nude you'd leave bum-prints. Not very inviting for guests! I'm not entirely sure how comfortable they are either, as they were (in)conveniently placed in the window displays rather than on the showroom floor, preventing me from 'testing' them. My lust for this chair is on a purely aesthetic basis.

While in the Valley we enjoyed the incomparable gelati from Shlix on Brunswick St- Gam had cookies and cream (because he always has cookies and cream), and I had a 3-scoop combo of Jaffa (best flavour ever!), bloody orange (so refreshing it was almost like a sorbet) and coconut. Gam also had a ridiculously-overpriced $7 slice of pizza from New York Slice, but he said it was really good. Coming from someone who makes the world's best pizza but still thinks Dominoes is 'really good' I'm naturally a bit dubious... I could so go a gelati marathon at Shlix and try every flavour in the store, though.