For the SUV fans

[FlyChicaga]

I know some people on here are carrying around kids all over town, and might be interested in affordable SUVs. I own a Saturn VUE, which is a great SUV for it's size! I was wondering if Saturn would ever come out with a larger one, and looks like they are... the Relay. www.saturn.com/relay

[/shameless plug]

Might be a good investment for those of you with a big family. I'm very happy with my VUE.

[ready2fly]

Cool. Saturn make a great car! But, it kind of looked like a minivan to me. Check it out:

Side view:

Has a sliding side door:


I do like the size of the interior though:

[MQAAord]

Yeah, that looks like a mini-van alright!
(Not that there's anything wrong with that!)

Not my style, I'm the big 4WD Tahoe type.

[ready2fly]

[ QUOTE ]
Yeah, that looks like a mini-van alright!
(Not that there's anything wrong with that!)

Not my style, I'm the big 4WD Tahoe type.

[/ QUOTE ]
Me either. I'm an SUV man through and through.

A buddy of mine bought a mini van and I did my brotherly duty of trying to talk him out of it.... right down to having him test drive an SUV.

He still went with the van and completely regrets it. Says he feels like a soccer mom. I told him - "Buddy, you ARE a soccer mom."

[FlyChicaga]

Nothing wrong with Mini-vans! Better gas mileage. That's what matters now that the prices are up above $2.00 a gallon.

[jtrain609]

Mini-vans? Good gas mileage? HA! I drive a 1995 Plymouth Voyager (last of the curvey boxy mini-vans before Dodge went to the new dust buster shape) and it gets 21 miles a gallon on the highway during the summer, 18 during the winter. I drive a mini-van that gets the gas mileage of a full sized truck. Heck, a mid sized truck or an SUV would get better mileage than this thing. The real killer is that I'm driving 200+ miles each weekend to go see skibum. I hate my mini-van sometimes.

Cheers


John Herreshoff

[shooter13]

That looks pretty good. Seeing as how my wife has been talking mini-van, I may point her towards this. She is stuck on Mazda though. She loves them. I have looked at the Vue. It is pretty good looking.

This is definately more minivan than SUV but it looks pretty good to me.

[FlyChicaga]

My Vue gets 19 city, 26 highway. Driving around Chicago and back and forth to Milwaukee, I get on average 22.5 MPG. Better than most SUVs I've seen lately. I should have gotten the Honda Civic hybrid!!

[shooter13]

Well my Jeep Cherokee gets 17 city and highway. Aerodynamics of a brick.

[ready2fly]

Rodeo gets just over 17 city and 20+ highway. Pretty standard for a SUV.

[FlyChicaga]

Anyone know websites to compare gas mileage between cars and SUVs? Just curious.

[MQAAord]

My Tahoe gets about 18 mpg. I've seen it as high as 22 (on the interstate coming back from the farm with a serious tailwind), and as low as 13 (on the interstate going to the farm with a serious headwind).

The Tahoe's mileage is better than I thought it was going to be. My old car wasn't getting much better, the lock-up on the torque converter was disengaged and had been for years because the car wasn't worth getting it fixed. So it's mileage was pretty lousy.

We drive up to Lake county to fill up (about 5 miles up the road), avoiding Cook countys' taxes. We usually end up saving about $.10 a gallon, when you're filling up a 26 gallon tank it adds up!

[shooter13]

I had a CJ-5 for a while that seriously got 8MPG. I towed it to Charleston behind my Cherokee and I got better milage towing it than I did driving it.

[averyrm]

Toyota's coming out with the Highlander in a hybrid version. It's supposed to "significantly better" the compact car average which is ~27mpg. It also has 270hp and can have 4wd (electronic, the back wheels are driven by electric motors only).

I've testdriven their other hybrid, the prius, and it's a pretty cool car.

[ready2fly]

I'm pretty excited about the hybrid SUV's that Toyota and Ford are coming out with. Should nip all that "SUV's are bad for the environment" crap in the bud.

My opinion: SUV's are no better or worse for the environment than an F-150, F-250, Silverado, minivan (any make), RV, or any large pickup or van.

[jtrain609]

I'm right with you, Stan. But I have to go on a rant here, anyone that lives up in the northern part of the world knows what I'm talking about:

Why do people that never drive in serious snow and/or go off roading drive SUV's and trucks? I'll be driving around Ann Arbor and/or the metro Detroit area and see SUV's and trucks all over the place. These people drive them on plowed city streets, never drive in a foot and a half of snow like they are designed to do and never take the things off road or carry a full load in the back of their truck (spotless and perfectly painted bed's are a good sign of this one). WHat's up with this? You spend $30,000+ on a serious off road vehicle to carry around you and your Starbucks at 15 mpg? What are you thinking?

Really gets to me. Where I'm from, you get a truck because you got something to haul. You drive an SUV because we'll get 1-2 feet of snow in a night and the road to your house might not be plowed for a week. That's why you get a vehicle with 4 wheel drive, not beacuse it's cool.

And for someone that's about to drop the "SUV's have lots of room line," they don't. My mini-van can haul three times as much stuff as my parents Jimmy. And after loading stuff into rich people's SUV's at Toys R Us for a summer, I really realized how LITTLE room these things have.

And in the words of my friend Deano, who lived in the middle of no where and hated people from the city: "Stupid townies."

Cheers


John Herreshoff

[MQAAord]

Well, I know I appear to be the picture of 'soccer mom', with the car seat in the back of my Tahoe in the suburbs........

But.....

We took our truck up to the boundary waters two weeks after we got it, and I was never so grateful for 4WD. We drove 10 hours through every type of precip known, rain, snow, sleet, freezing rain, freezing drizzle, ice pellets & any/everything else you can imagine. If it hadn't been for 4HI, we'd have been screwed !

A couple weeks ago we rented a core-airater & a de-thatcher for the lawn at Home Depot. We thought we'd get to use the hitch, and rent their mini-trailer. It turned out to not be needed, they both fit in the back of the truck, no problem.

When I take the baby up to the farm, I never even think about having room to take anything I want with me. Just toss whatever in the back & go.

So, some of us 'burbanites' do make use of an SUVs utility! I do see a lot of people like you describe though, John. You should have seen the looks we got when we got back from the boundary waters before we washed all the sh%t off the truck! It looked like the commercials where someone drives through a mud bath.

[FlyChicaga]

I'm one of those people that use the UV for "utility carriage" more than off-roading. Although I must battle un-plowed country roads to see my g/f who lives on a farm, I don't do much in terms of crazy off-road driving or find a need for 4 wheel drive. I survived the entire Chicago winter without a need, and I didn't just drive in the city.

I wanted to get a car that a) wasn't expensive, b) wasn't a gas hog, c) had lots of cargo room and room for people too, d) was comfortable, and e) was nice looking. So an SUV covered it all!

I do have trouble finding a need for the Escalade or Hummer though, besides to flaunt your cash... but that's just me.

[Kevin]

Okay I just want to say a few things about the use of 4wd. I live in the country and go into some pretty bad stuff and almost never use 4wd. I think that most people buy Suvs and huge trucks just because they want it for looks, not that I have any thing against people who want one. But I say get 5 gpm more and save 5000 and get the same thing but without 4wheel.
As for gas use I own a 1968 Plymouth Satelite with a 383 that sucks more gas than you can belive.
That new saturn looks pretty nice, do you know the price on it.
Kevin.

[shooter13]

I got my cherokee to tow a boat with. I got 4wd so I can use the low gearing for steep ramps and heavy boats. I drive my wife crazy by switching to 4wd anytime we are on a dirt road though.

I always say, we paid for it, we're gonna use it.

[ready2fly]

Good questions, John. The reason why I got a SUV was because I tried to haul 4-5 kids an their football gear in my Honda Civic and that just didn't cut it.

Plus, for me, there was a safety factor - real or imagined - in driving my SUV as opposed to the Civic.

In the Civic, I was involved in three accidents in a span of three months. Every time, the other drivers (all who were at fault) said "I didn't see you."

That, and the ability to store/carry more people/equipment was the deciding factor for me.

Besides, it woulda gotten mighty uncomfortable with the five of us in Kellwolf's car, right?

[TheShortOne]

naw, Vanessa and I are pretty small, and John's thin, so we'd all be able to sit there Actually I think my car has the most backseat space when trying to fit 3 people in it of any i've ever been in. '94 Dodge Spirit nice big box...built like a tank. I've been in 2 accidents in it and my car has only had the other car's paint on it, no dents, no scratches!

[sbe]

I don't play the 'bad for the environment' crap. An old car with a horrible exhaust system is worse for the environment than a newer SUV. Heck I'd LOVE an SUV. I really like the Chevy Trailblazer. Got a couple of friends with them. I'd love a truck. My sis has a GMC Sierra. But the reality is I drive 43.5 miles each way to work, and I'd go broke paying for gas, which just hit $1.88/gal by my house and $1.95 by my office (for regular unleaded, not the premium stuff). As it is I spend WAY too much money commuting. (Why not move, you ask? Living by my office would cost more than paying the extra gas, I work in a high rent district...and I LIKE living in the country on a 10 acre farm)

That said, I agree with whomever said 4WD is often misunderstood. When the roads do get bad here (doesn't happen real often, but it does from time to time), the vehicles most often found upside down in the median or at the bottom of an embankment are SUVs. People think 4WD means they can run 65-70 on snowcovered roads like it was CAVU and 75 degrees. 4WD DOES help when you are stuck in traffic and inching up a snowcovered incline. It DOES help when you are trying to get up the hilly drive that's not been plowed. In my sister's truck, it merely makes up for the inadequacies of being very light in the back end, as all pickups are.

In any event, perhaps someday my commute will be such that I can own an SUV. I DO like the ability to haul crap around. Of course, by then gas will probably be $5.00 per gallon so I'll still be driving a plain jane 4 cylinder commuter type vehicle...

Sarah

[averyrm]

[ QUOTE ]
That said, I agree with whomever said 4WD is often misunderstood. When the roads do get bad here (doesn't happen real often, but it does from time to time), the vehicles most often found upside down in the median or at the bottom of an embankment are SUVs. People think 4WD means they can run 65-70 on snowcovered roads like it was CAVU and 75 degrees. 4WD DOES help when you are stuck in traffic and inching up a snowcovered incline. It DOES help when you are trying to get up the hilly drive that's not been plowed. In my sister's truck, it merely makes up for the inadequacies of being very light in the back end, as all pickups are.


[/ QUOTE ]

In Ohio, where people can't drive very well anyways, I find that I get farther in snowy/ rainy weather in my Toyota Corolla (no ABS, no trac control, etc.) then a lot of other people do in all kinds of cars. It's not always what you drive, but how you drive it.

I still wouldn't mind more space though, waiting for both the Highlander Hybrid to come out and some $$$ to burn.

[ready2fly]

Well, here in FL, I laugh at anyone who DOES have 4WD, live in the suburbs and not own ANYTHING that they can tow.

Outside of living/working on a farm or construction site - there is virtually NO reason to have 4WD in FL.

1. It's flat
2. It's only snowed ONCE here in the past 100 years (1976); and
3. It's flat



I can honestly say that I've been driving in Florida for 23 years and have never had the need to used 4WD.

But, that's just me. Others mileage may vary.

R2F