New car - or 'Tell me what cars you have bought lately (that are interesting)'

I had a Hyundai Tucson before my current vehicle. It’s a small-ish CUV, but was very practical. Gas mileage wasn’t great, but not awful either, and I don’t put a lot of miles on. The ability to pull a couple knobs/levers, flip down the rear seats, and easily transform the entire back area into a large cargo space was VERY nice. The fact that the vehicle was somewhat small in terms of exterior dimensions (compared to minivans and full sized SUVs) was helpful with our small-ish garage.

The entire time I had it, we also had a minivan, which is useful with our 3 kids. For most of the that time, the minivan was a 2000 Ford Windstar. My wife mostly drove it (so it often wasn’t available to me), and to get storage room, you had to pull out the individual seats or the huge, heavy rear bench - significant undertakings. For simply heading over to Lowe’s or Home Depot or whatever and throwing a few large-ish things in the back, the Tucson was generally better, despite being a lot smaller.

In 2010, we changed from the older Ford Windstar to a new Toyota Sienna, with a much easier mechanism for folding the backseats down. And I got the urge to get a convertible so the Tucson is now gone. But they’re quite practical. I also think the newer CUVs are getting better mileage, but still probably somewhat less than a sedan.

Red Metalic, Coupe, MCA package trim. I took it out west last summer and felt distinctively less cool for not having a convertible, though tooling around the Santa Cruz Mountains is still a blast. Then I got back & put some snow tires on, & suddenly I’ve got the only Mustang on the road :)

Not sure about you, but I don’t consider hauling my own kids around carpooling. When I have to haul my kids AND other kids, that’s carpooling. I have 4 kids plus backpacks 3 days on 5, and this a crossover fits that bill nicely.
(the only reason, and I mean ONLY reason we have a Suburban is to haul the trailer when we go camping. I find the workmanship & performance to be meh at best).

I fully support people’s right to buy whatever crazy-ass car they want, because lord knows it’s what I do.

That said, I had two sisters, and when we were kids, we rode in my mom’s Civic. Which, keep in mind, was way smaller than today’s gigantic, luxurious Civics. And sure, that was cramped, but three kids in the back of a mid-size sedan is really not that big of a deal. They’re made to seat five.

(If you want crazy, go back to when my mom was a kid – 12 kids in that family. I’m pretty sure that if they lived like that in modernity, they’d never be able to go anywhere, as the “pile up” strategy is almost certainly illegal now.)

I have (well, it’s my wife’s car) an Acura RDX which is the small crossover SUV thing. Fits 5 adults reasonably comfortably (we have 3 teens) and has enough cargo capacity that we can all go somewhere for a weekend and carry the necessary backpags, bags, etc in the hatch back.

If you’ve got kids that play sports, it’s very handy to throw all the football/soccer/baseball/lacrosse/whatever gear for your kid and his two friends as you carpool them to the game.

I can’t really fathom a need for a full blown SUV, but we’ve packed our miniature version pretty full at things like Christmas where we travel 120 miles south to visit family for the weekend.

You know, I always wondered that myself, and then I had a coworker with 9 kids and I got to see it in action. They had 3 cars and they drove the kids in, no joke, a church van. Not an actual church van, but the type of “not quite a bus but one large ass van,” things. We would refer to that here as either a church van or activity van. I’m not even sure of what the actual name for that type of vehicles is. Utility van? It carried their entire family when they did trips.

This is what I’m describing but don’t know the name for:

Edit: It’s a passenger van.

Boy, that brings back fond memories for me! Our family used to tool around in a stretch commercial econoline! 2 parents, 4 boys and two dogs, enough room to not immediately get on each others’ nerves on long trips…

I just bought my second car - my first was a 91 camry which has been getting iffy since the steering rack blew out, and I have had for a bit over 5 years now. The new car is a 2010 Hyundai Getz, a car which does not exist in the US, and I think it’s called the Click in Europe. It’s cheap and small and light, and it’s relatively easy to service for a modern car. Which means that I love it.

On the other hand, this is the first time I’ve really driven a manual car more than once a month, so it’s a learning curve.

What is also great is owning a modern car with things like central locking and remote locking, and all sorts of things that have been around for decades, but I’ve never really had before.

You didn’t have seatbelts or kiddy seats - no small car can seat three small kids in the back these days (at least not here where car seats for kids are a legal requirement… not that I’d ever consider not using them).

We had seatbelts, which were mandated back then, even. Three seatbelts is totally normal.

(And again, even “small cars” today aren’t. A modern Civic is the size of an Accord from my childhood. A modern Accord is like a houseboat.)

Unless Japanese cars in America are bigger than the same cars here, they still don’t have room for three kiddy seats.
Having more than two kids means either divorcing your wife or getting a bigger car… and you’re younger than I thought.

But yes, it’s possible. We drove all across Europe in this:

Doesn’t mean it’s safe or comfortable, though. Or that you can bring all your crap (we had a shitload tied to the roof which wasn’t safe, practical or good for mileage).

But everything is possible

I am 34 and one half years old.

But no, not with three booster seats. Those weren’t mandated for older kids back then, and we only had my littlest sister in one of those.

My wife likes our houseboat, it’s huge.

We got the V6 version, which, in retrospect, was kind of ridiculous because there’s no way that it can keep the 290HP on the road, especially when I try to drive it like my 190HP AWD Audi A4.

This thread reminds me that I really need to clean out my car. The back seat is full of boxes of files and empty coffee cups.

No, not the Camaro. That is in the garage for the winter.

bump

So in modern vehicles, are there any real substantive differences between 4-cylinders and 6-cylinders? I mean in light of modern electronics and fuel injections and transmissions and lighter body materials and such. Back in the day the difference was pretty much just horsepower (4<6 derp!), but now I’m kinda seeing some pretty cool stuff done with four bangers.

I guess my question is: am I unfairly prejudicing my shopping by excluding 4-cyls?

Who needs four cylinders - two is the way to go:

I might be mostly wrong, but for normally-aspirated engines, the 6 cylinder is going to produce more torque and more horsepower at lower RPMs, although this is usually at the cost of increased mechanical complexity and higher fuel consumption. For a lighter car, you should be just fine with 4 cylinders, especially with direct injection and all of the modern goodies like that, unless you specifically want something with more power than you need (like me).

Another option is a turbocharged 4 cylinder for v6 (or even v8) performance in a small package, although those come with their own set of issues that aren’t anything I would recommend to someone who isn’t really a car person.

Yes, there is a difference. Sixes are invariably smoother, and have more low-end torque. You can be lugging along at low rpm and punch it and get a powerful response. A four banger you have to get into the power band at mid to high RPM. If you use a manual shift, it’s mostly a matter of gear selection. For an automatic, I’d prefer something with that low-end grunt. You can up the power on a four with a supercharger or turbo, but it still tends to be of the same nature.

Good responses.

I’d add a turbo 4 gives you all the power of a six, but with much better gas mileage. The tradeoff is complexity/long-term reliability, but its not as bad as yesteryear. Many car companies are downsizing engines a notch, but adding a turbo.

I have a MINI Cooper S. It has a 1.6L direct injection turbo 4 making ~180HP and 165 torque. I get ~35mpg on the highway at 75-80mph, and ~30mpg around town (and I am the opposite of a hypermiler). I got 12mpg last weekend while autocrossing it. This particular turbo has no lack of torque, and I have a manual. I agree it is no fun driving a low torque car with an automatic.

The trend in Europe for petrol engines is small capacity i4 with twin turbo, each turbo optimised for a different rev range. MB and BMW now actively looking at turbo’ed 3 cyl engines.

I6 is lovely (I’ve got one) but the friction losses in the pistons scale. A 4 cyl engine of equal power to an I6 will be more efficient. Thus the move to cut even further to 3 or 2.