Wasn’t really considering a big vehicle like this but my accountant tells me that SUV friendly tax laws let you write off 24,000 in one year for the purchase of a vehicle weighing more than 6,000 lbs, so I gave them a second look. My brother and cousin just bought new Suburbans (same basic vehicle) and love them to death. I can get one for 38,600 for 4WD version of the 2002 Yukon XL.
Looked at them tonight. This thing is huge but a good huge with leather, seat warmers, etc. etc. True, 90% of the time it would be burning 15 mpg of precious hydrocarbons hauling my lone read end around town, but the kids (12 and 16) are more or less adult sized now and the Accord’s getting pretty cramped.
Minivans suck. I used to have a yukon denali. It was a great vehicle, it would haul plenty of stuff, tow whatever I wanted to tow, and was a damn comfortable ride. I just about cry when I think about how I had to give it up.
Of course you have proof to back this up, perhaps previous ownership of a minivan.
Whoops, nope.
You owned a YUKON DENALI which may be several things, among them a waste of gas, and money, but it sure as hell isn’t a minivan.
Therefore, your opinion would seem to be worth quite a bit less then nothing.
'Course I could be wrong.
As I said before, minvans get better gas mileage and they tend to have more cargo space then SUV’s. Plus you can jazz them all up with DVD player and flat screen tv’s and all that crap.
Unless you live out beyond the middle of nowhere and it happens to snow an average of 60’ during the winter, you have no need for an SUV. Plus you can get minivans with all-wheel drive these days.
My mother has a suburban for her business. Loves it to death. I find it easy to drive in town, and even easy to park. It does use alot of gas, but hey, it has a 42 gallon gas tank, so you don’t have to fill it up all that often
Good lord this has been done to death on this board, but I guess we get to go again.
First of all, its a matter of preferance. I dont like minivans, I dont like the way they drive, they dont have enough legroom(Im an extremely large individual), They usually dont have enough power, they are usually cheaply built(at least the ones I have worked on have been pretty much disposable). They dont really have that much more cargo space, and most of them I have driven/worked on/ridden in I would have been afraid to put anything substantial in because it would probably tear it up. They dont usually have the towing capacity, so if you want to tow a boat, or a trailer etc, your out of luck. And they look like ass.
Thats right, I dont like the way they look. If I am going to spend my hard earned money for a vehicle, I wants something that doesnt feel like a tin can on wheels and doesnt look like shit. And yes, you can put DVD players, TV’s and all that crap in them too, if you want.
Before we do this again, however, here is the mother of all SUV threads. http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=60487
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Is pretty well covered there. SUV’s are designed meet a variety of needs, not just offroading and driving in snow. Your side of things is covered pretty well to.
My boss drives a Yukon XL. He only gets 10 mpg in the city, and he has trouble keeping it running. When it’s running, he loves it. It is very roomy in the back, and 6’2" guys seem pretty happy in the back seats (I’m 5’9"). It has less cargo space than my Volvo station wagon (25 mpg).
I bought a 1999 Ford E-350 XLT van for $30,000 a year and a half ago, seats 12 with more legroom than the Yukon for all 12 people, and it has more cargo space behind the back seat than the Yukon does. 15 mpg. Huuuuuuuuuge. My wife hates to drive it. More for me.
the van had 30,000 miles on it when we bought it, btw. Ex-rental unit that never got rented because it only seated 12, but was a 15-seat-sized vehicle.
[slight hijack]
Ethilrist, what kind of Volvo station wagon do you have? We’re going to have to eventually (within the next year) trade in our non SUV car and we’re looking at purchasing a Volvo Cross Country station wagon.
[/slight hijack]
It’s a 240, nothing special. 4-cylinder engine, eight years old with 130K on it. It’s falling apart at the seams (all the little plastic bits are starting to break off, the interior lights don’t work, the wiring harness for the back door runs through the hinge at the top, so the first time I opened the back door following an ice storm the shards of ice severed all the cables to the license plate light, defroster and high-brake light). But it runs and it’s paid for.
It’s also missing a couple of sensors in the engine, cost of replacement would be about $700. It runs fine without them, just doesn’t get 30 mpg any more. Parts are hella expensive.
You’re preaching to the choir about expensive parts, lemmetellya. Does your station wagon have seats (I think they’re called jump seats) in the (way) back for kids?
Nope, just the four-and-a-half seats. It’s got a roof rack, though; we were able to go on a couple of extremely cramped camping trips with our kids during the grim two years that we were Between Vans, but it wasn’t a lot of fun.
Minivan owner chiming in. I think big trucks are silly, unless you tow lots of stuff frequently, but I’ve never owned one. I’ve also heard that once you own a truck you can never drive a car again. Cars are so small. And my minivan (99 Merc Villager) only gets about 16 mpg. That’s better than 10mpg, obviously, but sucks compared to my old Honda that got 30-32 mpg no matter how I drove it.
If you can afford it and you like it, buy it. (This advice applies to everything, BTW).
