Re-Style My Ride

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5.26.11

Mathlete Hubby and I have been car shopping for a little while. I don’t know why I refer to it as “shopping” because it isn’t like we have been comparing vehicles and test driving all different models. We pretty much went into the process knowing only one vehicle on the market would really suit our needs which are pretty specific in nature. If there were some tool online and we plugged the following in, I’m sure it would be able to spit out about only one (maybe 2) vehicles that are currently available.

DVD player + air controls in the 2^nd row (that one is pretty easy)
Electronic rear lift gate
Rear section, behind the 3^rd row, with plenty of room for our puppy to ride
Seating for 7 (specifically a configuration for 3 car seats and 4 adults)
Ability to pull a car trailer with a car on itß(this one is the “problem” requirement)

As you were working your way through that list, you were probably thinking a mini-van/mid-sized SUV does this…until you got to #5 right? Honestly, #4 is probably a challenge for a lot of vehicles when you add that 3^rd car seat in (oh, and to clarify, the 3^rd car seat is definitely not ours…we are staying at 2!). So, why the need to pull a trailer with a car on it on such a regular basis that it dictates what kind of vehicle we will purchase? The answer:

You’ve learned a little bit about what my hobbies are by now (cooking, wine, organization, working on decorating our home, etc.). That little car is hubby’s hobby. From that picture, it probably looks like any regular Miata that you would see on the street but it really isn’t. The inside “luxury” items are gone and have been replaced by racing gear. He doesn’t get to do it as often as he’d like but Hubby uses it to run in road races at a semi-local race track. He participates often enough, though, that it only makes sense for us to have a vehicle that can easily haul people AND haul the car.

Up until now, we’ve been using our Envoy for race car duty and it works great! It doesn’t fit enough people to solve our other problem leaving us taking 2 cars whenever we go places with other couples/my parents/anyone outside of our immediate family.

Any ideas on what vehicle can replace our wonderful Envoy? Did you find that internet tool to tell you? No? Ok, I’ll just tell you now: a Suburban.

Now, before I go any further I want to address something that might bother ~~a lot of~~ some people: gas mileage and the impact on the environment. We try pretty hard to limit our impact to the environment in pretty reasonable ways (recycling, combining errands, re-using, etc.). There are LOTS of people who do a lot more than we do such as driving hybrids, biking places vs. driving, only having one vehicle, etc. Unfortunately, some of those things just aren’t practical for us as we both work outside of the house and we work in completely opposite directions. In addition, we don’t live close enough to bike or walk most places..it’s the downside of living in the ‘burbs. The Suburban does get pretty horrible gas mileage compared to many other vehicles on the road. However, we do not plan to use this as our every day vehicle. Just like we did with our Envoy, it will be a “family” car that only gets used when we are taking the entire family (or race car) somewhere. For everyday use, we tend to stick to our smaller, compact cars that get much better gas mileage. Could we do even more for our environment by not driving this or Hubby not racing? Sure, but that could be said about just about everything people do. We try to strike a reasonable balance with things of this nature (hehe..see what I did there?!) Ok, with that out of the way, I’ll move on.

After months of talking about our purchase, Hubby and I finally decided it was time. We are headed to the beach with our close friends/family soon and we wanted to be able to take one car (see…already limiting that environmental impact 😉 ). After many hours of waiting and signing paperwork, we brought home our newest addition:

It’s bigger than our Envoy so we I will definitely have an adjustment period with that but I can confirm that it fits 3 car seats and 4 adults very comfortably. Oh, and just in case one of those 3 kids or 4 adults gets cranky, there are 2 dvd players