We are selling our current cars (5 series and Impreza) and consolidating to one car, as I haven’t driven the Impreza in like two months. We need something with some utility and my wife cannot deal with station wagons (I like them), so we are looking at SUVs. I’ve been out of the car market for 10 years, but I’m thinking something that has amenities like leather, heated seats, back up camera, but can also get dinged on the bumper from city driving without it triggering an economic crisis. Any ideas? Anybody drive something like that?
Also, do you all usually sell your cars yourself, trade them in or what? I don’t know anything about this market and I bought my last car after the engine in my other one blew up.
If you are looking at SUVs, I see alot of the new Lexus RX350 on the road, it looks sportier now and offers great fuel economy and reliability.
Try sell it urself first but that can be a little frustrating, if you want to avoid all of that then your best bet is selling it to a used car dealership that has lower overhead (i.e. beat down locations) that can give you a higher offer. I remember helping my parents sell their used honda, when I took it to a more up-scale place the guy offered me 2000 and won’t budge so I took it to another one located outside the city and they offered me 5500 for it. You should always shop around.
Most money: private sale (post it up on CL, cars.com, etc). Research dealer trade in and add a couple of grand to that price. But be prepared to deal with weirdos who will haggle over everything and cause unnecessary frustration.
Least money: Dealer trade in. They will give you the wholesale value for your car(s) which will most definitely be a few thousand below private sale prices. However; there are 2 advantages: some states allow you to offset the trade in value against the purchase price of your new car hence tax benefit (5-8% on the trade in amount depending on your state) and it is a hassle free transaction.
In between: Take it to a Carmax. They tend to offer the highest value but you probably don’t want to buy anything from them since they sell mostly used cars.
My wife drives the Lexus RX and she loves it. she originally hated the idea of a bigger car and preferred her Civic, but once she started driving it she loved it. Super reliable and comfortable and you can get one with say 30 - 40k miles on it for around $30k. Only drawback is the interface with the info-tainment system sucks. we decided to forego it because it’s so bad. Saved us like $3k. Overall GREAT vehicle, although I’d call it more of a wagon than an SUV.
A great option if you want a little bigger ride is the Mazda CX9. a new touring edition is a little under $40k i think. looks like a really nice interior and reliability is supposed to be really good.
Yeah, the lexus interface is pure crap, I rarely use it and only serves as a backup for when you don’t have cell phone coverage. I ended up using google map most of the time as it takes 5mins just to put in the address on the lexus GPS interface.
I think 2 rows are fine, but it does depend a bit on cargo space. I live in a city, so there is occasional parallel parking, but I have off street parking at home. Nobody in the family commutes by car, so it’s mostly for weekends, once to twice a week travel to work meetings and daycare twice a week.
Originally I was looking at 3 rows, but the more I think about it the less it matters. Can you fit skis/mountain bike in with a two row vehicle with one part of the split seats folded, or do you need a rack?
The thing about these SUVs is that they keep getting better in each generation. 2018 Honda CR-V that is just announced is what an Acura would have been just a couple of years ago. Do you really need to step up to a premium brand? Not really - unless you want an even better car - better than you would have been satisfied with a couple of years ago.
Skis should not be a problem in any SUV with one seat folded. In fact, they should fit in normal cars too, as long as the car has the ski hole in the back seat. From my experience, one bike should fit also if you take off the front wheel. I used to have some thing like this, which I attached to a block of wood to hold the bike upright within the vehicle.
“I’m 36. I want to drive for about another 50 years. At 12k miles per year, I figure I’m going to drive another 600-700k miles in my lifetime. Which car family will come the closest to driving 700,000 miles?”
I expected him to respond with Honda or Toyota. To my surprise, he said that he thought Ford would be the best choice.