Bought a 2006 Dodge Durango with a Hemi tm . All the power you could hope for and drives like a Caddy. probably the safest vehicle I have ever owned. Doesn’t get great mileage but much better than a fullsize.
I had a 1993 Explorer that I finally sold this year. It had 181,000 miles, and yes, I miss it. But I also know that it was starting to get frail mechanically and that it would have died on me already had I kept it.
But…what did I replace it with?
My M-I-L, God Bless Her, sold me her dead husband’s car, which had been sitting in a garage unmoved for 10 years for $500. I had to pay a locksmith to snip off the old ‘The Club’ that had long since lost its key. I towed it to a mechanic to get it running, and when I filled out the Odometer statement, I got a nice surprise: Less Then 7000 Original Miles!!!
But, what is it? It’s a 1992 Subaru Loyale, with a 1.8 litre engine (decent mileage), 3-speed stick and push-button 4-wheel-drive. What’s a Loyale? It’s the model which is 2 ancestors prior to the Forrester. She’s not fast (zero to 60 in 3.2 weeks), but she is more than sturdy and dependable. Best of all, she goes through a crappy city pot-hole like a cop through a doughnut: with nothing but a smile. 
One of the funniest things I’ve seen was a SUV being pulled into an auto repair shop. The side door opened and fell off going down the highway with a bunch of kids in the back. She was the car ride for the day. The childern were buckled in so no body got hurt, just suprised. There was the SUV with the side door thrown into the seating area, sticking out the gapping hole. Without SUV’s I would have never seen such a funny sight, so I appreciate them very much.
Ode To A Suburban
I have a 13 year old suburban. ( bought it two years ago. Garage kept. Only used for summer highway trips. Maintained by an anal retentive person whom we knew/know. This thing was in mint, mint, mint condition. Actual purchase cost for it brand new was $38,000 back in 1993. )
I’ve always wanted a Suburban.
Ever since my uncle let us take out the two bench seats of his 1979 suburban ( power blue in color) and put a couple of mattresses and our junk down, pile in a bunch of high school and college kids and drive to Michigan Tech ( 12 hours away in the Godforsaken part of the Universe called the Upper Peninsula I keed. I love the UP. Athena don’t hurt me!). It planted the seed of " This thing can haul everything" in my brain.
I can haul 7 kids, all their stash and pull a trailer ( not camping, but yanno- a manly trailer) behind me if I am so inclined. The capacity for shit storage in the trunk-boot is near farking amazing to me. If only the wheel wells would magically go away, the capacity would even be greater. I could probably put a jacuzzi back there.
This vehicle went from lazy summer highway driving to schlepping kids 7 miles x 4 5 days a week on poorly maintained dirty roads My tax dollars at work! and it rides so firm and tight. When there was a passel of mini vans who could not make it up a rather steep icey incline and carefully backing up to take a longer route home, I just put my truck into 4WD and merrily climbed up the dreaded hill of certain death. I’ve waded through mud that went passed the side boards with nary a problem and sailed through pretty deep washed out roads when our fair rural road system up here failed to maintain properly. I take glee in driving now in snowstorms because this truck, in 4WD, has superb handling.
I am always hauling a variety of tools, chains, tarps, jumper cables, trailer hitches, a variety of clothing, winches and manly stuff for my husband. It takes up the entire floor of the back end. When we get a few bucks ahead he will build for me something like this so that we can keep the possiblities for airborn destruction from the rear in the event of an accident to a minimum.
I have , courtesy of the previous owner, a DVD player in there ( that was installed years before the fancy schmancy flip down high falutin’ yuppie entertainment systems came along. It is a TV/DVD player combo with a surberly crafted encasement system between the driver-passenger seat.) The kids very rarely watch anything on the DVD player - three movies in the last year - but when I do allow it - for unforeseen traffic jams - I have absolute silence.
I have a cassette/cd player. My god, that alone is the worth the cost. Though my cassette collection for the kids is quickly being outgrown.
I have also 4 couple holders in the front seat area alone. ( Two are completely useless and in the dash before the passenger. One is for change only and the one I like, installed by its previous owner, was broken by my kids.) But, still. 4 options! Wooooooo! Oh Rapturous JOY!
It doesn’t go 0-60 in 3.2 seconds. It is not that kinda machine, though stomping on the gas is a power kick and it is fun to watch the gas needle dip. When it gets up to cruising speed at its own speed, it is a very comfortable ride with lower than average wind noise and does not have the buffetting problem that higher profile full sized vans ( which I’ve owned in the past) have when passing Mack Trucks. You sit solidly in your lane no matter how strong the wind.
There is this message that is out there amongst other drivers that if they cut me ( or another Suburban driver) off they are going to be in for a world of pain should I not be able to stop in time.
There is some kind of innate pride to fly on the highway, trailer with a tractor on it, doing 80 mph without any effort what so ever on the vehicles part* This is what the truck was built to do. It ain’t some sissy-mobile.
Yeah, the 40 gallon tank sucks.
Yeah, the MPG is painful.
I ration my driving and fill up about every two weeks.
It is still cheaper to keep this truck with its expensive gas habit than to try to sell it and get a more affordable gas-friendly car. The way we look at it is it is $200 a month payment right now for an awesome truck.
*Editor’s Note: For reasons that are still under dispute at Chateau Ujest, we had to put in a new engine just this month.
Argument #1 is that this truck could not handle going from being a pampered stable pony to a tractor hauling draft horse.
Argument #2 is that this truck suffered humilation galore schlepping kids to and fro school and nothing else that consituted as manly jobs. My liscense is KIDL1MO after all.
Either way, it’s got a new heart and it is mine until its wheels fall off.
I wuffs my truck.
Were the bulb and lense cover defective? 
I was once hit from behind twice in two days- once by a kid in his dad’s dealer loaner, and next by a little old lady in a land yacht. Both caused damage to the offending vehicles, but I didn’t even have a scratch on my vehicle.
Of course, scratches, etc, only make it look cooler!
And no, let’s not get into the debate of “true” SUV vs. “dick enhancer” or the “do you really go offroad or are you a poseur?” arguments.
I think we should very clearly distinguish between those who need the honest capabilities of an SUV to do specific tasks that other vehicles cannot do, and those who just want to share in the rugged SUV image without doing any of the work.
Some friends of mine are activists. Conservative media would attempt to describe them as tree-hugger idealists who wear rose-colured glasses whenever they leave the house. Actually neeting them would dispel this image very quickly: they are courageous and practical, and their ideology always bows to reality.
And they are planning to get an SUV. They want a hybrid vehicle for the increased efficiency, but the existing hybrid sedans are just too low-slung for them; they need high doors and upright seating in a vehicle that can make it up their rutted and steep driveway out in the bush year round.
So they are looking at the Ford Escape Hybrid.
Dear Car and Driver.
I never thought this would happen to me, but…
Let me tell you a little story. You can skip ahead if you want.
Our story begins in 1994 with a little old rancher in Eastern Oregon. Let’s call him Earl. Noe Earl, being a cowboy and and Eastern Oregonian, Decides that he needs the biggest civilian vehicle available to him at the time, a '94 GMC suburban C2500. So Earl goes and gets one with lots of extras, except air bags, 'cause he’s a cowboy after all, and leather seats, 'cause leather seats are hot in the summer. Hell, in Eastern Oregon, everything is hot in the summer. Anyway, Earl brings his new vehicle home…and promptly dies.
About three years later, Earl’s wife, let’s call her Lureen, gets tired of the Suburban sitting in her garage, and offers to sell it to her brother’s wife, who happens to be my sister-in-law. SIL doesn’t need another vehicle, but she can buy it for about 1/3 of what it’s worth, and, being a cowgirl and an Eastern Oregonian, she can’t resist.
Well, SIL also has a 3/4 ton pickup, which is a more useful vehicle on a cattle ranch, so the Sub doesn’t accumulate too much mileage, and with gas getting up over $3.00 a gal, SIL decides it would be a good idea to have a small economical car to go to the store and such in, so she drives the Sub over to the (Willamette) valley to her mom’s place to buy a car. Wifey drives down (About 95 miles) to Mom’s to visit, and off to the car dealers they go. SIL buys a little Toyota and then asks the dealership what they’ll give her for the Sub, which at this point is worth ~ $7,000.00. They tell her $1500.00. :eek:
Now I’m not real clear about what happened next, but Wifey bought SIL’s Suburban for $5500.00, saying she could always resell it.
Anyway, we’ve had Moby (the Great White Whale) for 2 months now, and Wifey loves it. We don’t have to fold ourselves to get in and out of it, and the visibility is terriffic. On the down side, it gets about 10 mpg, and, with a 42 gal tank, it can cost $125.00 to fill. Just the same, I doubt Wifey can be persuaded to give up her new found power, and I really don’t care. after 20 years of tiny, sensible cars, I’m finding that I like it too. I don’t fold as well as I used to after all. Now I know why little old men drive such big cars.
I don’t want or desire to move furniture, but present circumstances dictate that I need to move furniture. Makes sense in that context, doesn’t it?
I’ve got a 1997 Jeep Grand Cherokee (5.2L V8 engine, 4-wheel drive). Originally purchased as a family vehicle, it has been my daily driver since 2000. Aside from moving furniture, it has been used to transport a large golden retriever, Christmas trees (on the roof), various class projects, home improvement supplies, and luggage (if you’re wondering why this is significant, you’ve never seen my mom pack). Sometimes the Jeep serves as a storage area for clothes and boxes. I’ve got a full-size spare and a large toolbox in the back; there’s enough space back there that I’ve never had to remove either one to fit everything.
I really enjoy driving it offroad (no heavy rockcrawling though), and it’s great in snow. I haven’t broken anything major offraoding, though I do have plenty of scrapes. Mechanically, it’s been almost trouble-free.
Agreed.
I want to live where I do. In fact, at this time It would be foolish for me to live anywhere else. If I am to be able to get to work and back, I need a 4x4. Not an AWD car.
So, I could get a 4x4 truck, or an SUV. Since the SUV fits my other needs better than a truck, that’s what I drive.
I love my Jeep Liberty! I resisted getting an SUV for years…I have always opted for small, high-gas-mileage cars due to always having a long commute. My husband and I have been talking about getting one for probably about 5 years, since we are renovating an old house ourselves, and are always having to haul stuff from Home Depot. Kept resisting, because I felt guilty. A few things finally tipped the scale. First, the baby came along, and this was when my husband really got interested in it, for safety reasons on the commute (sure, when it was just me, it’s fine to take chances, but now that I have the kid in the car, it’s a whole different story! 
Secondly, we also have been wanting to take more trips up to northern Wisconsin and Michigan, and the car we had just isn’t appropriate for those back roads.
We needed to get a small one, since we have a small garage, but wanted one powerful enough to pull a boat and haul bricks, pavers, bags of cement, and all the other stuff for our house. So, we shopped around and found the Liberty. The main problem with it is that there is not enough room to haul really large things, or to have more than 2 carseats in it. Not sure we will have more than 2 kids, so it probably doesn’t matter for us. But because of the size of our garage, if we did have more than 2, we would need to get a mini-van. 
One bonus of the SUV that I had not considered is how much easier it is to get the kid in & out of her car seat. I am too old to be trying to bend over and lift her out of the seat at the same time!
I luuuuuvv my SUV. Honda Element here. Yeah, I scratched it…about 19.6 hours after I drove it off the lot. Then I scratched it again to teach it a lesson! The tailgate is plastic…scratches just make it more personalized. I can haul kayaks on top and bikes on a hitch rack (at the same time if need be). All the accessories dump into the back where the “now you see 'em now you don’t” seats get out of the way fast. I can take a troop of scouts camping out of the back of it…just open all the doors and let them dump their gear on top. I get decent mileage at 28 MPG HWY w/o boats and bikes, so people seek me out to go roadtripping with them. Mud, spilled McFlurries, and used chewing gum wipe right off of seats and floors. It handles well, turns better than most little cars, parks anywhere. I have AWD for snow. And I can stop a not-so-speeding elderly man in a Lumina if I have to. His frame was so bent he couldn’t get his doors to open and close. I hade to replace some suspension parts and the wheel where he hit my car. I hope my Element lasts almost forever and that they are making a newer, better Element when mine finally dies.
My Toyota 4Runner is a 1984 which is the first year they came out. Toyota fanatics will note that it has a solid front axle which is great for offroad, but pretty rough on the highway. Hey, it’s a real truck. It will go anywhere that I’ve got the balls to push it (I’m a chickenshit), the Eastern Sierras, right here down Gibralter road, Park City, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Moab, and Baja. It’s great for hauling my catamaran around on the beach plus it’s great in the snow (Yeah, the winters are brutal in Santa Barbara). I can sleep in the back when I’m road trippin’ and it holds all my camping gear.
It’s a dog (super reliable 22R 2.4 liter 4 banger) but I love it. I wish it got better gas mileage and that it was faster (that cop that gave me the speeding ticket for 79+ mph was a lying bastard). I was going to argue in court that there is no way that this car will go that fast (go ahead, I’ll give ya odds). God help you if you ever want to make it over the Rockies. It only has 127,000 miles on it and I only drive about 6000 miles a year, so I don’t feel so bad about the shitty gas mileage. I swear this car will do another couple hundred thousand no problem.
Now, if I just got rid of my 3 air cooled VW’s and got a Yaris or a Matrix, I think I’d be set (a sensible complement to the 4Runner).
Another practical SUV option for the Hybrid lovers is the new Saturn VUE Green Line - http://www.hybridcars.com/saturn-vue-hybrid.html
I’d be a little worried about the combination of 1,000 pounds of bricks in the back and a sudden dramatic stop.
SUVs are great for highway trips and/or hauling people and stuff. As a daily driver for a single person they suck. I had a nice 96 Explorer with all the options for about 6 months, then one day I just said to myself “Why am I paying $400 a month for crappy handling and 17mpg to carry myself back and forth to work?”
Best combination I’ve found is a mid-size 4-door car as a daily driver and people mover, and a pickup for hauling stuff.
I know I mentioned my 1993 Explorer…and I know I told You I missed it. But I never told you why I loved it.
We bought it in the fall of 1993 and that year, we were invited to a horse race in central NJ. Not a track race…it was cross-country on a farm, and people would rent spots and tailgate. It was a really snobby affair; it was where people went to show off, but we were guests so whatever.
It was late October and it had been raining all day…in a farmers fields. Yes, mud would go up to your knees in some spots, so people avoided them. My Explorer was shiny-new & red, with its new tag sticker still on the back. A row over, someone else had a Landrover… all shiny new with a temp sticker on the back. I ignored him, but he would use every opportunity to rev his engine and try to show off, presumably for the high-society ( gee, I misspelled ‘snobby’) single girls, who would titter with delight at his antics. (Think of the tavern scene in the cartoon of ‘Beauty and the Beast’. Yeah, that bad.)
Well, the day draws to a close, and its time to leave, but the people who left early left some seriously muddy paths for us to drive through. Mr. Show-off cuts in front of me ant tries to go first. He stomped on his gas pedal like he was crushing bugs, and went through deep mud like a true jerk. And like a true jerk, he got himself stuck. 
Suddenly all eyes are on me and I’m laughing because this is silly and stupid. But I put her in neutral, put her in “low” and “4x4” (God I miss button on-off 4x4! Do you hear me Detroit???). I then evenly applied some gas. And low-and-behold, I scooted right by the Beached Landrover. I swear I even heard some "Ooooooo"s from the crowd. I kissed my hand & patted the dashboard…and then I was on my way. 
Of note also, It is still the only vehicle that I’ve owned that could haul a week’s worth of clothes for 2 people and 9 cases of wine back to NJ from the Fingerlakes in New York State. At the time there were 68 vineyards in the Fingerlake region and paying for the wine was the easy part…
::lifts two fingers off the wheel in a wave to friend vetbridge:::
i am not sure if a wrangler is an SUV, but i sure love my 2006 golden eagle.
Well, the first one I remember was our old Jeep CJ-7, back in the late 70s. It hauled bales of straw, sheets of plywood, bags of manure, me, my stuff, my bike, our bikes, rocks… people…
Heck, we even used it as a bulldozer to do some landscaping with, and we drove it in to the back yard to haul out stumps. Plus, with our 20 degree, half mile long driveway and winter… well. Mom was a teacher, and no matter how bad it was, if her school system was open, she was at work.
We had to sell it one day… it was more rust than jeep at that time. The tipping point was when Mom got in, went to put the seat belt on, and the entire belt mounting point came off in her hand. Sold it to a kid for five hundred… he was going to put a new body on it.
We still see it, the kid reversed the leaf springs and axle, it’s a high-rider now, and it’s fifteen years later.
Old Jeeps never die.
I’ve got a Ford Escape, and love it. It drives like a car, gets the mileage of a V6 sedan, it’s actually shorter than most sedans so it’s easy to park and manoever. It’s got reasonably sporty handling, 200HP, AWD. And a very good factory stereo (Ford ‘Mach’ stereo with 6 CD changer).
It is just a fabulously useful vehicle. Edmonton winters don’t bother me a bit. It hauls five people in comfort. With the back seats down, it hauls an amazing load. It’s pretty good looking, too. I got the ‘sport’ model that has a cool roof rack, sidestep bars, and alloy wheels.
Going on a long vacation with the wife and kid, the Escape gives us tons of room to haul along lots of luggate. I can haul building material, lawnmowers, furniture, all kinds of stuff. And I’ve grown to love the ‘command’ seating position with the excellent view in traffic.
And In the three years I’ve had it, it hasn’t had a single mechanical problem.
I’ve orn got a F-150, 5.4 L banging the hell outta life getting me from a to Georgia, averaging about 10.0 MPG. Take it for what you will, but rest assured I’m pulling more faster, than you are alone . . .
Tripler
“I was the dark of the moon . . .”
I had a Ford Explorer. My wife hit a small patch of ice going about 15mph. The car started a sideways slide for about 10 feet and stopped when it fell over on its side.
Great car.