There it is. Our new car.
No, you're not seeing things, it's a mini van.
Oh.
My.
God.
I drive a mini van!
Even worse? I LOVE IT!
We've been talking for a long time, at least two years, about getting a new (used) car. Both our cars were still in fairly good condition, but were getting old, and our Mazda Protege in particular was beginning to feel very cramped since we had Alex. This wasn't really a problem until John broke his hand and could no longer drive a stick shift, forcing Alex and me out of my lovely Dodge Stratus and into the itsy bitsy teeny weeny Protege full time.
I've wanted a Toyota Prius for years now, we even went so far as to go look at them with intentions to buy, but chickened out at the price tag. I swore up and down my next car would be a hybrid of some sort and I'd never, ever, ever, ever drive a gas guzzling SUV. But then I realized that another sedan would just give me as much room as our Protege or Stratus. We borrowed our sister-in-law's Rav4 when we went to San Diego and discovered that a small SUV isn't going to give us much more cabin space either. I began to do some casual research on smaller SUV's with third row seats, but found that the third row of seats don't offer much, if any, leg room for passengers forced to sit in the back and also, when we have a second child and subsequently, a second car seat, it would have to be completely removed in order to allow people to climb back there. That's when we started to notice mini vans.
I'd never considered a mini van. Mini vans are for families with lots of kids. Mini vans are for Mormons. Mini vans are... well, they're dorky and big and the exact opposite of anything that could be considered hip and young. Then it occurred to me. Neither John nor I are hip and we're most certainly not getting any younger. We are in fact, a little dorky and big. We have a family that will eventually expand, maybe not to Mormon proportions, but almost definitely to two kids. Maybe a mini van is what we need. So, I did some research. Guess what? Mini vans are cheaper than SUV's. Mini vans get better gas mileage. Mini vans are roomier and have more versatile seating options. Mini vans are... kinda cool!
I began to get a little discouraged however, because I couldn't find any style mini van in our price range that didn't look like a road barge. I tried to visualize myself zooming around town in a Dodge Grand Caravan, and I got a little sad. Then I found it. It was without a doubt a mini van, but it was smaller, shorter, more compact. It was almost cute even. Best yet, it was the right price. It was a Mazda MPV.
We found a potential candidate for sale on line and went to test drive it. I sat in the middle seat with Alex and John drove. It was comfortable. It was roomy. It had a smooth drive. All three of us fell in love. We traded in John's Protege and came home the proud new owners of a silver 2004 Mazda MPV.
No comments:
Post a Comment