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The year was 2017, I was 23 years old, it was Monday morning, and I needed to get to work.
No problem, right?
My commute was 5 miles of easy driving down a 35 mph road, and my fleet was extensive: I counted 10 vehicles at my house that day, including a diesel Mercedes with a cracked bell housing, an Isuzu Trooper with an angry EFI system, an Isuzu Rodeo with no compression, a Factory Five 818 with no battery, a caged Miata that wasn’t street legal and a 200,000-mile Ford van still hitched to a trailer from the weekend’s race. Oh, and three dead Volvo wagons plus a dirt bike.
I called a friend to get a ride to work, then stood in my full driveway to do some soul searching. This wasn’t a one-time problem: I’d probably have to drive to work again tomorrow, I reasoned, so I should figure out how to get a car running.
Unhitching the van would be easiest–but wow, was it expensive to fuel and miserable to drive. The Volvos needed major work, as theoretically I had one good car between the three. The Miata and Factory Five would never be daily drivers–they were track cars–and the Isuzus were off-road toys that were even worse to drive than the van. I was stuck.
Maybe, just maybe, I needed to buy another car. Something I could drive to work, something that would always run, something that, frankly, I wouldn’t be tempted to ruin by turning it into yet another project. I was an adult, I told myself, and it was finally time to buy a “real” car.
My budget precluded buying any of the usual options, so Fiestas and Civics and such were off the table, never mind anything cool like a GTI. So I cruised Craigslist and kept track of whatever vaguely modern cars seemed to depreciate the fastest. And after a few weeks of searching, I had two finalists in my search.
The first option was objectively cool, at least when walking is the alternative: How’s a loaded, 375-horsepower early Hyundai Genesis sedan sound? The second option was objectively not as cool: an overgrown electric golf cart with 84 miles of range. The butt of every joke and the epitome of the anti-enthusiast car, low-mileage examples of Nissan’s earliest LEAF were also in my price range. (And yes, LEAF is capitalized, because Nissan says it’s an acronym for Leading Environmentally-friendly Affordable Family car. Seriously.)
I’m pretty sure these two polar opposites were never meant to be cross-shopped, but here I was doing just that. Both were similar money and qualified in my mind as “real” cars. My big question: Did I want to dive into the tail end of the past with the big, V8-powered, rear-wheel-drive sedan or did I want to fully commit to–and rely on–the earliest stages of the future with the electric car?
Ultimately, I reasoned, I’d already learned everything I needed to about V8 sedans, but I had so many questions about EVs. I made my decision and bought a 2012 Nissan LEAF SL via Craigslist for $8900. And yes, I financed it, meaning it was also the first car I’d ever made payments on. My friends mocked me immediately, but I was happy and I was proud, because I was finally driving a “real” car to work.
And drive it to work I did–over and over and over again. I’d planned on driving the LEAF for a year or so while I got back on my automotive feet, but instead I ended up keeping it for nearly four years, doing no maintenance besides wiper blades. It was just so damn convenient, and thanks to the plug in my garage, it was always full of fuel and ready to take me wherever I needed to go.
Plus, I actually liked driving it–even its meager motor’s electric torque was enough to light up the front tires at will, and it would also fit a set of 18x10s in the trunk with the seats folded down. Real-world range was somewhere around 70 to 75 miles, but I still road-tripped it across the state a few times and even drove it out to our $2000 Challenge just to see if I could.
I learned about batteries and about public EV charging, about kilowatts and volts and amps, and mostly about the value of having a “real” car in the driveway to free me from working on my daily.
In the August 2025 issue, you can read how Andy Hollis and I road-tripped a very different electric hatchback in the Tire Rack One Lap of America Presented by Grassroots Motorsports. Hyundai’s Ioniq 5 N is everything the LEAF wasn’t: six times the horsepower, five times faster charging and three times the range, plus infinitely better looks and truly impressive driving dynamics. People kept asking me if I really thought it was possible to do the event in an electric car, and my reply was simple: “Of course it is. Let me tell you someday about the time I bought a Nissan LEAF.”
Comments
A FIAT 500e keeps popping up near me for cheap until I read the fine print, price included a reduction for the tax break I would get. I get the appeal as most of my daily driving is 50 miles or less. It may happen some day if I find just the right deal.
Tom Suddard said:
it would also fit a set of 18x10s
This sentence did not end how I expected
akylekoz said:
A FIAT 500e keeps popping up near me for cheap until I read the fine print, price included a reduction for the tax break I would get. I get the appeal as most of my daily driving is 50 miles or less. It may happen some day if I find just the right deal.
I’ve also been intrigued by the 500e.
If the price was right, I think it’d make a pretty good “just running into town for a coffee” sort of secondary vehicle.
TravisTheHuman said:
Tom Suddard said:
it would also fit a set of 18x10s
This sentence did not end how I expected
Little Nissans usually have a lot of room inside! I drive a Nissan Versa Note (I have 2, my wife drives the other one) and I’m always amazed how much I can fit in that little car. We sometimes use it as “drift event support vehicle” and fill it with tires / tools, and I also use it often for hauling around my car show booth to local events.
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