Honda Pilot has come

Pilot is a beautiful mid-size SUV. It appears relatively small at a glance and looks similar to boring CR-V face. Inside is totally different, it is very roomy 8 passenger vehicle with well finished, high quality interior. It weighs whopping 4400lb (2 ton) dry. It's 3.5 litter V6 engine delivers 240 hp of might which accelerates the heavy metal effortlessly but guzzles gasoline like a thirsty horse however it is supposed to do a better job than competitions in the same class. So far we get 16 mpg (6.8 km/l) but it should get better as engine break-in completes. The nominal mileage specified on the manual is 17 mpg for city and 22 mpg for highway.

By the way, this Pilot is the first ever brand new car we purchase. All our previously and currently owned cars are used cars.

We are lucky to be able to spend $41,000 for this luxury car. The price includes, tax(7.75% California tax is not a small money for this price), registration fee and all the accessories and installation fee. We payed in cash without loading us with new financial burden. We were not going to go for this extravaganza originally but all the stocks I purchased in the summer and fall of 2002 went up beyond expectation within a year. At that time people were selling stocks furiously including those excellent companies which had no problems at all. I just picked them up from the pile of trash. Some of them even went five times of the purchase price after market came back to normal state. Collectively the $20,000 investment across many different tech stocks, each $1,000 to $2,000, nearly doubled. When I was ready for purchasing Pilot I sold them all. So the majority of this Pilot was paid by the good luck in stock market. I have no stocks currently. I don't plan to play the same game again in the foreseeable future because I know this was just a fluke.

The system has a map in a DVD based database located underneath of the passenger seat. It maps the vehicles position onto the map. It not only positions the current location on a map but also searches a destination by address and calculates a route to the destination and guide through while traveling by voice as well as visual cues. The DVD database is large enough to cover major cities and all highways within entire continental United States (excluding Alaska and Hawaii). This kind of GPS system is pretty popular in Japan but still rare in the States.

A small shiny silver object on the right side of the license plate is a rear-view camera block. When gear is put in reverse the navigation screen switches to a color image from this camera. It has a wide angle lens pointing downward. The image covers from immediately below the bumper to little over the horizon and 150 degree left to right. It is a great safety feature particularly when toddlers are around. They appear suddenly from nowhere without getting noticed.