Originally posted by neon_duke
What does New York have to do with anything? You live on Manhattan, not the damn Catskills. Then there might be an excuse. Why won't a minivan work there? Are they not cool enough?
Your sexy little minivans are complete boats. A Grand Caravan is 200.6 inches long. Try parking that in New York City. Most garages on Manhattan won't park long-wheelbase minivans because they have to pack cars into small spaces - that doesn't include the garage at my house or at work, though. Still, I'd eat off my face before I got anything over 185 inches long. An X3, Forester, or Outback is perfect.
What I really want - and I've been pondering this for weeks now - is a car the size of a Mazda 6 with the features of an LS430 - I'd have one in two seconds, no matter what it cost.
And besides, you can get a Grand Caravan Sport AWD in the $30 large USD range, with a 3.8l V6 and enough sauce to tow a 3500-lb racecar/trailer, and a cavernous interior.
Harsh. For $32000, you can get a Caravan SXT AWD (Sport was cancelled), and that's the base Caravan with AWD. It's a load of ****. An AWD Durango seats seven with similar spec/options and a much larger engine for just $28700 - and it's not even the segment's best buy; I'm only using it as an example because it's on the same page. And to make things even worse, Chrysler is the last mainstream minivan maker offering AWD, and they've cut it down to a single trim level on each model. It's looking bleak, Duke.
If I was looking in that range I would most assuredly be looking at a wagon rather than an SUV.
Change 'wagon' to 'Outback' and you're closer - it's the only AWD wagon for sale anymore. How weak is that? (yes, Volvo and Audi have them, but they're no competitor for small SUVs and hardly a competitor for midsize SUVs)
What about non-AWD vehicles? Are there any credible wagons in the same sort of size as the V70/A6? Or (going smaller) the 3-Series?
The Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable have wagons, but they're **** and everybody realises that; something like 80% of their sales are in rental fleets. We've got a few small hatches, but they're all the length of a PT Cruiser and nowhere near the height. A couple offer AWD, but it's rare to actually find them with it. We've of course got the 'low on utility high on style' luxury wagons like everybody - A4, 3-series, V40, IS300 - but they sell so weakly that Jaguar isn't even bringing the X-Type wagon to the US, which seemed like an obvious move. We've also got the standard A6, 5-series, E-class crop, but they're nearly as rare as the small ones.
SUVs have everything wagons have and a bit more utility. What the hell is so wrong with that?
Did you get to have a go in a Zafira when you were in the UK? Or the woeful Xsara Picasso?
No, neither.
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