Looking for a New Ride

I’m in the market for a new car. Well, not a “new” car but a replacement car that would be new to me. My truck has been in and out of the mechanic’s for several months now. I guess that’s what you get when you drive a vehicle that’s old enough to legally drink.

I think the truck still has some good life left in it, but also think it’s time to get something more reliable for daily driving. Which poses numerous challenges.

For one, I hate buying cars. Not only do I despise the car dealership experience, but I don’t like expending money on a purchase that promises nothing but future expenses. I like cars and trucks as much as the next guy, but I don’t like to spend money on them. Especially when there are so many features for which you’re forced to pay extra.

Give me AC, a radio, and hand crank windows and I’m pretty much set. But you can’t look at an 8-year-old or newer car that doesn’t have a touchscreen, or “lane assist”, or wireless charging pads, or heated seat warmers.

Another challenge is narrowing down how many passengers this vehicle should be able to carry with our family of nine. We don’t need another Hulk (our big van) and even a minivan or large SUV doesn’t really make sense for my normal driving. We also have a student driver on the way to consider. Knowing we don’t need to fit the full family do we drop the capacity to five? Seven? It’s hard to determine which scenarios are worth taking into consideration when looking at how many kids could fit. And don’t even get me started on the car seat compatibility calculations.

Then there’s the issue of what cars can actually fit whatever kids there would be seats for. I took the older three to CarMax to do some real-world tests for back seat kid space. It turns out there’s a vast difference in room amongst third row SUVs. I think the boys learned how spoiled they are with some of the room they have in the back seat of the truck.

This doesn’t count as a challenge but an unexpected situation arose from having brought the boys with me. We did a test drive in a full-size truck and they instantly fell in love with it. I mean they had named this truck before we even finished the test drive. 

Now, was this because it was actually that roomy and comfortable? Or would they have been blown away by any shiny clean truck that was only a few years old? Who knows. All I know is we probably shouldn’t have driven that truck first as it became the point of comparison to which no other vehicle could compare.

One SUV came close though. They only had one model that we could drive at the lot and it happened to be a top-of-the-line luxury edition (of course). This thing had two moon roofs, LED lighting for your feet, and multi-climate controls for both sides and the back of the car including heated and cooled seats.

While the 12-year-old accidentally baked his buns in the back by putting the heated seat setting to max, the 14-year-old and I had our first taste of real luxury using the cooling setting for the front seats. I don’t remember which one of us said it was like sitting on top of a refrigerated air hocky table -- but he was right.

As of this writing we still haven’t picked out a new vehicle. It won’t be the truck the boys loved, and it’s not going to be a fancy luxury ride, but I’m sure we’ll find something that fits our needs. And, just to be clear for the 14-year-old: cooled seats don’t qualify as needs.