You don’t know what you got, until it’s gone. It’s not just a song title from the ‘80s hair band, Cinderella; it’s a simple fact of life. Whether you’ve lost your woman, your fat bank account or your favorite Carpenters 8-track cassette, losing something ‘close to you’ [pun intended] can be detrimental.

For me, it’s my daily driver. A few weeks back I was invited to work out of the powerTV offices in Murrieta, California with my colleagues (normally I freelance from home), and I’m currently still stationed in the Southern California as I write this. I’ve been here for almost a week now, and I love it so far.

The people I’ve met are cool, the weather has been gorgeous and the scenery is amazing, at least if you’re from the Midwest anyway. I’m even happy with my hotel. Just one thing, my rental car is terrible.

To the locals this is yawn-inspiring, but for someone from the Midwest, this is like a whole 'nother planet. Image:temeculacaliforniahomes

I don’t want to complain too much since I greatly appreciate the fact that powerTV Media is picking up the tab for me to get back and forth from my hotel room to the office every day, but since I don’t want to be rude, I haven’t bothered with wearing a paper bag over my head while I drive it. In case you’re wondering what it is, it’s a Toyota Yaris.

Not the two-door hatchback version, the one that I’ve mentioned resembled a scrotum in one of my previous articles, but of the four-door sedan variety. It’s a sort of blue/grey/green metallic color and truthfully, it’s the worst car I have ever driven.

Here she is. Well not the actual one I've been driving since I couldn't be bothered to take a picture of the thing. Image: Automobile Magazine.. and Toyota, probably.

I once drove a friend’s ’97 Ford Aspire fourteen years ago and up until now I didn’t think cars got much worse than that. Evidently, I was wrong. Despite the fact that it’s good on gas and supposedly reliable according to people like J.D Power, it has nothing to offer to somebody like me.

It’s slow. It’s ugly. It’s small. It handles like the suspension is made out of twigs, and the brake rotors seem to be smaller than milk bottle tops. Sure, it serves the purpose of getting me where I need to go while keeping my head out of the rain… but there’s no soul, no passion. The gauges are located in the center of the dashboard and when I first saw a similar arrangement in a Saturn Ion eight years ago I thought it was stupid then…I still do.

Come to think of it, the whole car is stupid. It doesn’t have remote keyless entry but it does have three keys that only two of which actually opens or starts the car. The third key seems to have no purpose at all other than make some noise in the pocket of my jeans as I walk to my desk every morning.

Then there are the interior features. The chime to remind you to put your seatbelt on is a normal formality in all cars of today, which is understandable, since no auto manufacturer wants to hear about a 16-year old teenager flying through the windshield of one of their cars while coming home from the orthodontist.

The stupid centermounted gauges of a Yaris. Image: AOL Autos

Most new cars usually ding for several seconds, either until you put your belt on or until the car’s computer gets bored of you ignoring it telling you to do so. However the one installed in the Yaris doesn’t shut up, ever.

I always wear my seatbelt out of habit anyway (mostly because the cops in Ohio will pull you over and shoot you if you don’t) but in the Yaris, if you don’t put it on within the first five seconds of starting the car, the ding increases in speed as if it were saying, “if you don’t strap up right away, the doors of this thing will blow off emergency-evacuation style” and will continue to ding like that throughout your journey or until you put it on.

Some of you may remember Sheila Hershey, the woman whose 36KKK breasts allegedly saved her life after being involved in a car accident with her Mustang last winter.

You can always turn on the Toyota’s stereo to quell the endless dinging, of course. Unfortunately, the speakers in the Yaris seem to have been borrowed from a ’79 Chevy Monza, and trying to crank it up any louder than at a normal speaking level will only result in a lot of muffled nonsense and you just end up shutting it off.

That said, it still boggles my mind how the mainstream media keeps going on about how Japanese cars are better built and more desirable than those from American marques. It’s total BS. Even if that were the case, you couldn’t in all fairness say you would prefer to drive something like a Yaris over that of a Chevy Cruze, which is at least a good-looking car in the same vehicle category as the much-hated ‘Yota.

I think the first thing I’m going to do when I get back home is pull my CTS-V out of the garage and rip through the first three or four gears. I have to; I’m going through withdrawals of driving a real car. The people who regularly drive cars like the Yaris don’t know what they’re missing, and that’s worse than knowing what they are.