Howdy Webriders! Dr. VW here. We haven’t gone on an auto adventure for a while, so I figured it was time to take a little trip! Today I’m going to talk to you guys about my newest best friend: My brand spankin new Garmin Street Pilot C550!

Now… I’m normally not one to buy into the hype of new technology that becomes available for cars. I was one of the last holdouts for a bluetooth headset,  and i still don’t even a basic AM/FM radio in my 1971 Squareback. So to my passengers it might come as a surprise to get into my aging wagon and see a shiny new GPS unit stuck to the windshield.

You might ask, why would anyone NEED a GPS? Well, I don’t think anyone really NEEDS one. But the fact is that Dr. VW is extremely lazy and does many things at the last possible moment. Case in point: I had a date with a pretty girl in a strange city and had no idea where to go or where to eat, let alone get to her apartment from where I was (a hotel). Now, I suppose google maps would have helped, but Dr. VW, being the genius that he is, planned poorly and had no time. Cue in my Garmin Street Pilot. With a few taps of the touch screen, I had a route, a place to go, and a restaurant all picked out! Crisis averted. Other times its made itself useful is while in a strange neighborhood on a job site (I moonlight as a house painter) I needed to find a place to eat. Well my handy dandy C550 happened to know where all my favorite fast food joints were, and I got there with plenty of time to spare on my break to take a nap.

Would I recommend people getting one? Sure! I bought mine on sale for 200 bucks at costco, and I couldn’t be happier. Plus, it has nifty features like bluetooth phone sync (quite possibly the coolest feature ever) and I can play music through it (keeping me from throwing down 200 on an HD radio and some more greens on speakers). Not a bad deal.

Well webriders, thats all for today but be sure to check in at the end of the week for Foreign Fridays! This is Dr. VW– out.