Krik's Picks

It was Christmas Eve Day. My wife and I had plans to meet friends for a movie and dinner. I opened the garage door and hopped in the car. I pressed the start button. All I got was a sickening "thunk, thunk." The electronics started flashing error messages on the dashboard. It was obvious that the Jaguar would not be our sleigh ride on this Christmas Eve. Flashback: When I retired, I bought a new 2014 Jaguar XK. I have coveted Jaguars ever since I became acquainted with them in the mid-1960s, in fact since before I even had a drivers license. But over the years, I always had other, more practical priorities, like paying for college, getting married, buying a house, having kids, saving for their colleges, saving for their weddings, saving for the grandkids colleges ... Me and my XK My wife gets the actual credit for the Jaguar that's parked in our garage. She's the one who encouraged me finally to start a dedicated account to save up for a Jaguar. And by the tim...

I doubt that headline will cause anyone at Hertz HQ to do cartwheels. I only end up renting a car once or twice a year. But after another great experience with the company in March, I decided to write a blog post about it. National used to be my preferred car rental agency. Before I retired, Land O'Lakes had a corporate agreement with National. I had an Emerald Club loyalty card through the company, and it was convenient to also use it for personal travel. I still have an Emerald Club membership. I just haven't used it since retiring in 2013. My first experience with Hertz came in 2014 as my wife and I planned a trip to Italy. For some reason (I can't really remember why) I was dissatisfied with the choices available from National. So I decided to look around. Hertz had the best options available to me at the time, so I decided to book through them. We had a great experience renting the car in Italy. In order to facilitate the rental, I installed the Hertz iPhone app....

If I had discovered Jay Leno’s Garage on YouTube sooner, I might be driving a different car today. As I’ve written in a previous post , I bought a Jaguar when I retired. Easy to say. But after I finally decided to do it, I had to decide whether to get a new car or a restored classic. I fairly quickly discovered that the price would be pretty close to the same. You can pick up a classic E-Type for less than I paid for the new XK that I was looking at. But then I’d have to pay for restoration (because I have neither the ability nor inclination to do the work myself, not to mention no garage to do the work in or tools to work with). So a nicely restored E-Type would have cost about the same as the new car. Ultimately, I let ‘practical’ considerations carry the day. Now, I know it’s probably a stretch of the definition to say that buying a Jaguar is a practical thing to do. But my considerations all were practicalities about what I needed in my retirement car. I only have a two-car gar...

When my wife and I were in Italy (April 2013), we rented a car for a few days of driving around Tuscany. It was a Fiat Punto . It was a nice little car. In Italy it’s classified as a ‘super-mini.’ Here in the U.S. I guess it would be called a subcompact. It was reasonably fun to drive while visiting the medieval hill towns. On the highway, it would cruise along fairly easily. I think the fastest I pushed it was 120 km/h (72 mph). But, it was basically just transportation. And being on vacation in Italy, I couldn’t help but wish for a more stylish ride. Fast forward to 2015. I had an opportunity to drive a 1987 Alfa Romeo Spider ‘Quadrifoglio.’ One of our auto dealers in Minnesota has a collection of ‘heritage’ cars available to rent. (Check out Morrie’s Heritage Car Connection .) When I first heard about it, I wondered why ‘heritage’ and not ‘classic’ cars. At least according to Wikipedia, the most common definition of a classic car is 25 years or older. (An antique car is 50 years...

When I retired last summer, I allowed myself one indulgence. I bought a Jaguar XK . I knew it wasn’t the most practical choice. But I’d coveted a Jaguar since before I could (legally) drive. All through my working life, there was always something that took precedence over it – buying a house, remodeling the kitchen, saving for the kids’ college, saving for their weddings, saving for the grandkids’ college. So when I started to plan for retirement, I resolved that I would finally get one. As I worked with the representative at the Jaguar dealership, he asked if I planned to drive the car in the winter. I said ‘yes.’ I only have a two car garage, and I certainly didn’t want to store the car for four or five months of the year. I figured as a retiree, if the weather ever was so bad that I didn’t feel comfortable taking my Jaguar, I’d either take my wife’s car ( Honda CRV with all-wheel drive) or I’d just stay home. I’m not so naïve that I’d expect a car salesman to say, “Well wait a mi...