(I bet this will get me all sorts of incredibly useful search engine traffic…)<\/p>\n
Some time back, I asked for car-buying advice<\/a>, and got a wealth of it in comments. Yesterday, Kate and I did a little car shopping, and visited a handful of local dealers to look at various cars. As with the last time I did this (circa 1997), just sitting in cars was enough to narrow the choice dramatically.<\/p>\n We tried pretty much everything in the big car\/ small SUV line at the Honda dealership, and there wasn’t a vehicle there where I didn’t bang my knee into the steering column while switching from the gas to the brake. The Subaru wagon\/ SUV vehicles were likewise hopeless, to the point that even the salesman couldn’t work up any enthusiasm for pushing new things at me. Toyota was somewhat better, but still had significant knee position issues. The one car we tried there that didn’t bruise my knees was an Avalon, which fails the cargo space criterion, as the back seats don’t fold down (which is the primary cargo issue with my 1999 Taurus).<\/p>\n That pretty much narrows it down to two vehicles, with a number of pros and cons and car questions that I’ll put below the fold, to build suspense…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The two vehicles that were comfortable enough to actually drive around a bit were the Ford Freestyle<\/a>, which is basically a station wagon version of the Five Hundred (which replaced the Taurus), and the Ford Escape<\/a>, which is a small SUV. Both had ample leg room, and the wheel was positioned in a way that gave me a good deal of freedom in positioning my leg (the Honda and Toyota cars would’ve been ok, if the wheel could’ve been adjusted upward another few degrees). <\/p>\n This is pretty much what happened the last time I looked at cars, too– I ended up with a Ford because they were the only cars that were well designed for my height. The new round of Fords aren’t quite as good– they’ve gone to a built-in center console that restricts movement a bit– but they’re still better than anything else we tried.<\/p>\n Of the two, I’m leaning in the direction of the Freestyle, because the one we drove was pretty nice. The Escape comes in a hybrid model with considerably better mileage, but they didn’t have one on the lot, and the 4-cylinder model that was suggested as being similar in feel to the hybrid was a little too truck-y, and seemed under-powered (for me to say that is really something, as that’s the knock on my Taurus, and I’ve never had a problem with that). Consumer Reports<\/cite> also declines to recommend the Escape and variants due to a tendency to go up on two wheels in side impact tests, which is also a factor.<\/p>\n In the Pro-Freestyle column, we have: Nice ride, lots of room, generally good reviews on the Interwebs. In the Anti-Freestyle column: the mileage is good but not great, and Ford is having some trouble at the moment. Others would probably add that Fords don’t have the reliability record of Honda or Toyota, but I’ve had fairly good luck with them in the past, so I’m not too worried on that account.<\/p>\n If anybody has any experience with either of these two vehicles, I’d be happy to hear more opinions. The customer reviews on the Consumer Reports<\/cite> site are generally good for both the Freestyle and the Escape, though I haven’t looked around to see if they just tend to get only good reviews for everything (suggestions of cars to check out in search of bad user reviews are also welcome).<\/p>\n Also, a couple of car-buying queries, as I am not a Car Guy:<\/p>\n 1) How important\/ useful is the All-Wheel Drive option on these? I know the point is supposed to be that it improves handling in bad weather, but how big a deal is that? The Taurus is front-wheel drive, and I haven’t had any major problems with it up here. The AWD versions are a bit more expensive, and the mileage is a little lower, though neither of those would be a huge obstacle if it’s worth having.<\/p>\n 2) The Freestyle has a Continuously Variable Transmission, just like Kate’s Prius. I know that this takes a little getting used to, but are there any significant downsides to it other than that it feels weird after years of driving regular automatic transmissions?<\/p>\n 3) What options<\/a> would you consider essential? The standard features on the “SEL” version look fine to me, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t some critical feature in the “Limited” option package that I’m missing.<\/p>\n 4) I wouldn’t mind hearing can’t-miss financial advice, either, if there’s some conventional wisdom about the best way to approach new car financing (what’s the optimum combination of downpayment, loan term, interest rate. etc.). Kate handles most of that sort of stuff, as I’m Bad With Money, and prefer to leave it to her, but I’m happy to pass along useful tips.<\/p>\n Feel free to suggest other cars that we really ought to look at before making a purchase. There isn’t a huge rush, here, though we’ll probably do something in the next few weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (I bet this will get me all sorts of incredibly useful search engine traffic…) Some time back, I asked for car-buying advice, and got a wealth of it in comments. Yesterday, Kate and I did a little car shopping, and visited a handful of local dealers to look at various cars. As with the last… Continue reading New Car Shopping<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}