Prudence or pleasure

Well the last few contractual nibblets seem to be unravelling and with any luck the 30 day move clock will start ticking around the middle of next week. Now it's time to address practical concerns.

As part of the new job is going to mean travelling outside the city to meetings then a car is a must. Public transport in San Francisco is good but beyond the Caltrain to San Jose there's virtually nothing.

Driving in America is a very different experience to the UK, at least once you get out of the cities.

American roads are, in the most part, a joy to drive on. Huge highways criss-cross the nation, tracing the contours of the land with gentle curves and have excellent visibility, enabling the easy spotting of police vehicles. The only downside is the ridiculously low speed limits but you get used to those and without the cameras that bedevil British motorways going a bit above the limit isn't a problem.

In 2005 I took a week off after a conference in San Francisco, hired a car at an absurdly cheap rate and pointed it south (see above picture). After some initial confusion about driving down the road on the wrong side, particularly a sphincter-clenching moment when I realised I had turned into oncoming traffic, it was a breeze – and turned into one of the best holidays of my life.

The only real downer on the trip was hearing the news that Hunter S. Thompson had died. He'd been a hero of mine for years, ever since reading Hell's Angels, and I was actually in Barstow when the news broke that he'd gone out with a bang not a whimper. Sadly there were no drugs to take hold (to quote Fear and Loathing) and when I asked the check-out clerk he'd never even heard of the man who put Barstow on the map.

Today's oil price news will cast a bit of a damper on that now. Petrol (I can't bring myself to call it gas, although that may change) back then was around $2.50 a gallon. It seemed incredibly cheap compared to the $7 I would have been paying in the UK and it was an intoxicating feeling. I travelled over 2,000 miles on that trip, mainly because I kept making detours to interesting sounding places.

Now petrol is up to $4 a gallon and motoring will be pricy – not as bad as the UK but more of an issue. So I'll need something reasonably economical, reliable (nothing ruins an interview like arriving late) and fun to drive.

Another key feature is that it'll have to be a manual, not automatic. This isn't just because automatics hurt miles per gallon. Automatic gearboxes are like having a plastic cover from your phone – eminently sensible but take some of the fun out of the whole experience.

Logically I should go for a Honda or Toyota, cars that never go wrong and provide a reasonable ride. American cars are out – I've never driven one I wouldn’t happily throw on the scrap heap due to cripplingly uncomfortable seats, suspension like overcooked spaghetti or the cornering abilities of a supertanker.

But I've just spied this little beauty on Craigslist, the Mazda MX5. I had one of these ten years ago and it was the most fun you can have in a car with your clothes on. A rear wheel drive sports car that's sure-footed, quick off the blocks and very forgiving. I am sorely, sorely tempted.