Car search should have been easy
This should have been easy. My wife's 1996 Legacy Outback wagon had been so trustworthy, sure-footed, and versatile that when its catalytic converters gave out last year, it seemed a simple matter of replacing it with another one.
After all, we considered ourselves Subaru Folk (of the Whole Foods, not food coop type). As I reviewed my checklist -- safe, reliable, cheap to fix, and, above all, a car that I wouldn't have to worry would leave my wife and two girls stranded in the snow somewhere -- what else was there, really, but an Outback?
So began our own little Odyssey, our Quest for the ideal family car. And while early on we wandered from rejection to rejection, we ended up just fine -- proud owners of a new leather interior, a sizeable car payment, and a few automotive life lessons. To wit: figure out who you are first, and the right car just may find you; keep an open mind, because it might not be the one you were expecting.
It began well enough. We started with young used cars. I found a great 2003 Outback with low mileage and a six-CD changer in the dash, which the guy let me take home for an overnight test drive.
But as it sat in my driveway, it just looked wrong. I found myself staring at our child seats, then at the Outback, then at the child seats again. My head swam with images of car pools, a third child in back, and Grandma, Grandpa, and our 15-year-old dog in tow.
We needed something bigger.
We focused on three categories: SUVs, mini vans, and "crossovers." That made things easier, since right away we could cross off SUVs. We were not SUV people. My wife basically equated owning an Expedition with clubbing a baby seal. I had read too many stories about SUV roll overs. As for minivans, my wife wasn't excited about owning one. She prefers smaller cars. We decided to look at crossovers.
We started with Subaru, of course. We looked at the new Subaru B-9 Tribeca. For about eight seconds. It looked like it had been designed by George and Judy Jetson. With all those unnecessary flying-saucer curves and taillights that looked like Martian eyeballs, no wonder The
To us, Subarus had been cool precisely because they weren't trying to be cool, or had failed at it so endearingly. Just like that, we learned were no longer Subaru Folk. We were also starting to learn a bit about ourselves: that looks in a car mattered more than we had realized.
The next crossover, the
Others dropped out as well. We were running out of crossover options.
Quietly, bearing in mind my wife's aversion to big cars, I started researching mini vans, figuring I might be able to talk her into a good one if I found it.
From a looks standpoint, I was partial to the Nissan Quest. But that "leading consumer magazine" wasn't, due to below-average reliability reports. Sigh. Among the best reviewed were the
Hmmm, looks OK, I thought. Not too boxy. Behind the wheel, the Odyssey was pretty nice too, kind of like driving a little delivery truck, which in a way it would be -- what with our kids' calendar of day care, kindergarten, gymnastics, and T-ball. I started warming up to the idea.
Not my wife, the fashion writer. "A mini van?" She made a face as if I asked her to wear white after Labor Day. Too big, and it just plain didn't suit her style. I made a mental note of lesson number two: When shopping for wife's car, pay close attention to feelings of wife.
"Someone who buys a crossover," Ralph Gilles, director of the Dodge Truck Studio at the Chrysler Group, once told Edmunds.com, "is someone who probably belongs in a mini van, but they can't deal with the image." That was us, only now we couldn't find the crossover that fit our image either, not to mention our needs.
We looked at our list again. That left . . . SUVs! How did we ever get here?
This was where we made another realization: that somewhere between the time we decided we hated them and when we concluded we had to consider them, some SUVs had evolved.
I made high demands: it had to have anti rollover stability control, decent gas mileage, and great reliability ratings. Surprisingly, I found three: the Acura MDX, the Honda Pilot, and the Toyota Highlander.
I crossed the MDX off the list first; too pricey, and like the B9, it had the space-buggy look. I was partial to the Pilot, with all its room. Then my wife drove it and got out shaking her head. Too big, she said, too truck-like.
That left the smaller Highlander, which didn't have room for all our space needs: extra people, luggage, and the mutt.
After much searching, we found a 2004 Highlander with all-wheel drive, third-row seats, leather seats (dog hair!), CD changer, in a color we liked: a metallic grayish light blue. It felt as big as it needed to be, and cost around $24,000.
Still I wasn't sure. As it turned out, I was hanging onto my old Subaru persona: sure it looks good, but is it practical?
Oh, the salesman said, did I mention it's built on the Camry chassis?
The Camry? As in the reliable, dependable, practical Camry? The Subaru of Toyotas?
We were sold.
Ralph Ranalli can be reached at ranalli@globe.com. 