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Boring! I know, I know, keeping tabs on your vehicles maintenance schedule isn't the most glamourous or fun thing to do on your iPhone/iPod. Vehicle maintenance is important though and something you should do so why not do it on your iPhone/iPod? 

Car Care doesn't do all that much and it won't change your oil for you. It will, however, remind you of when you need to have the tires rotated and balanced as well as change your oil.  More importantly, Car Care can track your gas mileage. The latter was the reason I originally bought it. 

The wife, kids and I recently took a cross country trip in our gas-hog  Dodge Durango. For some strange reason I wanted to know what gas mileage I was getting (burning up all my vacation time and driving 1200 miles just to see my in-laws wasn't depressing enough apparently). Car Care does this well. Each time I stopped for gas all I had to do is enter the mileage from my odometer and how many gallons I pumped and Car Care figured my MPG's. It even displayed a pretty (depressing) graph of our gas mileage. Thinking back on the trip, the only thing worth looking forward to during our gas ups, was playing with Car Care on my iPhone. It sure as heck wasn't the 17.6 average MPG's I got nor was it the $4.09 per gallon I was consistently paying. 

Car Care can also track various other services you might have done on your vehicle: tune-ups, radiator flushes, power steering, wipers, etc. Each type of service allows you to enter the price of the service and the odometer reading. It doesn't appear that you can set a reminder for these types of service, however. No big deal for me as I don't normally worry about it this kind of stuff until something goes wrong. Just Kidding!

I can't decide if I like the way you enter data or not. For odometer readings you spin individual numbers on the fake odometer in Car Care. Its kind of pain but it does look nice. If there is anything not to like about Car Care its that. There's also the buttons for selecting regular, premium, super or diesel that as far as I can tell really serve no purpose. 

For $5, though, you can't go wrong. It tracks your fuel economy, or lack there of in the case of my Durango, and looks good doing it. Sure you could do the same with a calculator and a piece of scratch paper or two but what's the fun in that? No doubt there are also free alternatives on the iTunes App store so check them out before you plunk down your hard earned cash. For more info and screenshots visit Car Care's KB Productions website.

Oh and rest assured I'm still doing my part ensuring that big oil continues to reap obscene profits. Anyone want to buy a sweet 2005 Durango?

Joe Henry
AYAAW