general cars

Posted February 21, 2005 • Comments Off on cars

The other night, my mother and I had a conversation about SUVs. For several months I’ve been planning on buying a Saturn Vue as my next car. I want better visibility, better acceleration, and more space. I want a more powerful engine and an automatic transmission. And I love the Saturn experience.

But Consumer Reports rated the Vue’s acceleration only “fair,” and a friend who’s driven one said he thought right off it was underpowered. So then I was torn.

Buying an SUV is a difficult thing, because they’re either HUGE (the Fords, though I would never buy a Ford, and the Dodge Durango, and the GMCs) or they’re luxury (the BMW X5 is gorgeous) or they’re really wagons (the Forester, the Matrix) or minivans (the Chrysler Pacifica) masquerading as SUVs.

There isn’t a lot of choice in the “small SUV” category, especially if you want something attractive (that is, not a Honda Element or Pontiac Aztek) and doubly especially if you want something American. By the end of the discussion abou tthe Consumer Reports article, I was down to the Jeep Liberty as the only reasonable choice.

Then my mother wrote me an email suggesting I trade cars with her. She has a 99 Oldsmobile Alero, which is a little bigger than my car. It has almost all the options my 96 Saturn does, plus a few it doesn’t. I’d be trading a keychain remote for a power seat and an in-dash CD player. I’m not crazy about my mother’s car, but despite being more than five years old it only has about 15,000 miles on it (my car has 103,000), and it would obviously be an improvement in the safety, reliability, and acceleration categories.

But it doesn’t SING to me. I love my car. I’m emotionally attached to my car. I’ve had my car for more than nine years.

But my car is a stick shift, and I live around Washington. I merge a lot.

So it took a day or so of pondering, and I’m still a little squirreled about the whole thing, but we’re gonna do it. She’s going to drive it up here in mid-March, spend a weekend, and drive my car back to Florida.

The Alero looks like this one:

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