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Smart Shopper What's the best vehicle for my needs?
1145 messages, Last post on Sep 17, 2009 at 12:59 PM
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Replying to: shawbeg (Jan 23, 2009 12:24 pm)
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Replying to: shawbeg (Jan 23, 2009 11:31 am) And right in your price range. Another good choice is a 4 cylinder Altima. Larger and consistently gets 30mpg highway.
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Replying to: cccompson (Jan 23, 2009 6:10 pm)
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Replying to: plekto (Jan 23, 2009 11:27 pm) 
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| If you like the Matrix, the Pontiac Vibe is basically the same vehicle but sells for less. They can be hard to find used but I really like ours. However, for the size of your family and their ages, I would think a minivan would really be more comfortable. Toyota Sienna gets decent mileage and could haul kids, friends, and gear with ease. A wagon isn't that much cooler than a minivan really! | |
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Replying to: shawbeg (Jan 24, 2009 6:24 am) |
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Replying to: shawbeg (Jan 24, 2009 6:24 am) |
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Replying to: shawbeg (Jan 23, 2009 1:09 pm) In our minivan, the rear seats seemed to be designed with small ones in mind, not large teenagers. The second row bucket seats were smaller than the ones in front. The third row bench had pretty a low back in addition to a short seat cushion like the 2nd row buckets. The leg room also was not great for adult size people. I've seen this in some SUVs too, in another way...in those sometime the horizontal leg room looks plentiful, but when you sit you find the seat is low and there is not enough room to stretch out your legs so you end up perched with knees up. I don't know how the rear leg room is but the Focus wagon has a lot of cargo space for it's size. On the gas mileage, there was a good point made about the very small difference between hwy and city mpg for your vehicle, but sounds like your driving is more like highway than city. Take a look at the test schedules EPA uses, to see if that is so: http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/fe_test_schedules.shtml My own commute is far more similar to their hwy schedule (or a cross between hwy and high speed, which is what I think the highway rating is based on) than the city one and I typically get about that mpg, at least when it is not too cold. |
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Replying to: shawbeg (Jan 24, 2009 6:28 am) **** 14-16K for a used vehicle that has good features and handling? Even the smallest Mercedes gives the basic imports a real thrashing. Now, the Mazda 5 is a nice car, to be honest. But there are tons of alternatives. I just don't personally like driving a jellybean MazHonToy sedan. All the soul of a rental car, to be honest. Note - I'm avoiding the entire diesel thing entirely, as that currently leaves you VW, which are well, not quite the most reliable vehicles.(the new ones are fine, but way out of your budget) Other choices that you might consider are the Honda Fit. Why? Because with the rear seat able to recline as it does, the legroom is enormous. Seriously, it has the rear legroom of a Buick. Sure, it only fits 4 in comfort, but so what? Hauls stuff pretty well, too, and the new model that just came out fixed a plethora of tiny issues. Basically the first gen Fit was brought over from Japan and the steering put on the other side - the rest of the car was still speced for Japanese driving. So the angles and mirrors and other small issues in the interior were reversed from U.S. norms. That's been fixed. Very nice car now. Then again, there's nothing wrong with a GM, either. A 1-2 year old Grand Prix can be had for about your budget. This fits 4 nicely, and while some say it's not good enough for the interior, it's no worse than any other sedan out there. ie - it may seem tacky compared to an Avalon, but it's loads nicer than a Yaris. Get the 3.8L engine. It's bulletproof and reliable. The 4 speed automatic may be a bit stodgy, but it gets good MPG(28-30mpg highway in real world driving). It's also one of the least expensive transmissions to fix as well(huge plus in my book). Half the price to fix it compared to a Camry, actually. And, since you're looking at used, the transmission is a huge factor. Plus, it has the goodies like traction control, ABS, and so on as normal equipment. (the Mercedes also has this advantage - even a bare bones luxury car has all the safety equipment). The Grand Prix also has three things that I like about it. 1 - It's stupidly low priced now. I've seen one year old models going for about what a new Yaris goes for. 2 - 100K drive train warranty starting in 2007. Get one with 20K on it and enjoy 80K more miles without worrying about it. Note- if it's certified, you can extend the factory warranty more years if you drive less. (ie - 8/120K is common and hardly any more money) 3 - The shifter is 1-2-3-4 all in a single line and dead simple to shift as such in traffic. If you remember the shifter on the old Volvos, it's identical. First, it has a legitimate first gear(most automatics now don't) - and it's easy to nudge it from first to second or hold out overdrive. Combined with the sport suspension option, it actually drives very well. It's the least obnoxious automatic in any car that I know of. It doesn't try to out-think you, doesn't have paddles/a stupid +/- or other idiocy. It has a lever and you can manually override it whenever you wish. Large, good mpg, long warranty, depreciates like a rock. Makes it a very good used value.I picked Pontiac because it's the sportiest yet least expensive version GM makes with the 3.8L engine. I plugged in $13K, any distance, and certified/used 2008 Grand Prix into Autotrader and it spit back 280 hits. $12K gave me 79 results. This is the asking price. How low you can actually haggle now if you have cash? 11K consistently. For $11K, it's an absolute steal. That buys a 5-6 year old Civic? I have driven both and while it's nice, a Civic is still an economy car. Note - that's a 40% drop in value in a *year*(22K minus 3-4K in rebates - about $18K was typical last fall on a base model)- that's most of the first decade's depreciation out of the way. Expect it to lose 1K a year after that if you do buy it for 11-12K. That's quite decent depreciation, actually.
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Replying to: shawbeg (Jan 23, 2009 11:31 am) Otherwise, Ford Freestyle, Chrysler Pacifica, most any late model domestic would still have a long life ahead of it at $15k. |
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