Yesterday the Chief & I did a bit of preliminary car shopping. I liked the Vibe - nice ride, good visibility, and of course all that hauling capacity. I didn't test the turning radius, but it did OK on the slight hills in the dealer's neighborhood.
Next stop was the Honda dealer down the road. Sounds like Honda has some incredibly intelligent engineers designing their vehicles. I absolutely love the way they've arranged the Fit's cargo capacity - those seats fold 20 ways to Sunday! The gauges are a little tough to read, though, and I dearly wish the Fit were more the size of the Matrix or Vibe. Give me that, Honda, and I'll take two - one for me and one for TW! I also test-drove a Civic. Like the Fit, it had a nice ride and tight turning radius (at least compared to my Saturn). The instrument panel was much easier to read than the Fit's, for a sedan it's got good cargo capacity, and to our surprise, it actually gets slightly better gas mileage than the Fit, due to its more aerodynamic lines. Both of them had an impressive list of standard features, which is giving Honda the edge at the moment. And when the salesman started itemizing all the service features (shuttle to take you anywhere w/in a 20-mile radius, free loaner if your car is in for extended service), well, as I said, Honda's looking really good right now.
Our last stop was a Toyota dealership. This one was pretty crowded, our salesman wasn't a true salesman (or maybe just new), and we were getting tired by then, so I only tested a Matrix. (I'll test a Corolla some other time). The Matrix's acceleration seemed a bit sluggish compared to the other cars, even the Vibe (same size engine - I checked the info the Pontiac dealer gave us), which surprised me. Comfortable enough, though the full power steering would take some getting used to, after driving only power-assist for the past 9 years. We got the books for the Matrix & Corolla and left. I'll check them out at a dealership near work, maybe later this week.
The last candidate is the Mazda3. Haven't even been to a Mazda dealership yet, but there's one near work, so there's one more agenda item for an afternoon this week.
Do you have any of these? What do you like about yours, what do you not like, would you buy it again or go with something else?
1 comment:
Hi,
I'm a friend of flibbertigibbet who wandered over.
I have a Matrix which I got since they stopped making my little Saturn station wagon (which I got when they stopped making my Honda Civic wagon :). It has lots of cargo room, good turning radius (much better then the Saturn, almost as good as the old Honda), generally a good car.
Two things I don't like: 1) road handling on my two-wheel drive version is poor on wet or snowy pavement. I'd go with the AWD version (mileage isn't much worse)
2) the vent system has this weird quirk whereby if you put any sort of defrost (aimed at the window) air on it forces the vents to open. This might be fine as a default, but forcing it in Washington produces too many "do I want to be able to see or breath" moments. With luck they have changed this on the new ones.
scotte
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