Thursday, July 8, 2010

A Newsed Car?

We're thinking about buying a new car. This weekend was a good example of times when an SUV would just be much more convenient and useful.  We spent the 4th soaking up the booze sun at Lake McConaughy. It was at 100% for the first time in more than 10 year but more on that on a later post.

Josh's Subaru was great for the dirt roads and we were able to get it down to our beach campsite. The real problem was the lack of storage space. Had we been able to fill it to the top of a hatch we may have been able to fit Lisa back in our car so Shanna didn't have to drive to our house to drop Lisa off.  Oh well.

Of course our primary requirement for the new car would be it cannot be a HUGE gas guzzler. Now SUV and gas guzzler are basically one in the same but the new hybrids do open the options a bit.  We'll also be buying a used car. It just seems silly to buy a brand new car which loses it's value as soon as it's driven off the lot. Our top two contenders:

Toyota Highlander Hybrid

My Dad and Liz have a Highlander that they bough a while back and I really like it. I've heard it's like a minivan on stilts (Russell) but I don't care. It gets good mileage for an SUV and optional 4WD. I'm not really worried about the recall that happened this year. Most of them should have been fixed right now and if not, maybe we'd be able to get a screaming deal and then just get it fixed on our time.

Ford Escape Hybrid

This one gets even better gas mileage than the Highlander but it's still a Ford. I know they are have been working really hard to improve their quality but I still remember when Ford stood for Fix Or Repair Daily. 

Of course since my little Honda gets great gas mileage (awesome for my 81 miles/day commute) and it's worth basically nothing as a trade-in we'd be trading in Josh's car.  This would also mean Josh is the primary driver of the new one...boo...but on weekends and in bad weather it would be all mine.  This weekend we may venture out for a test drive to determine which we like better. Then we'll shop until we find the right one at the right price. There are about a million other things we could spend money on right now (hello air conditioner) but Josh's car is starting to wilt and we may as well trade it in while we can still profit.

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