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August 04, 2004
driving appliance
so a friend of mine is in the market for a new driving appliance. the old DA is a honda accord, about 10 years old, which now won't start. he's given himself about a week to acquire a new DA.
the situation's different from 10 years ago. he has more money and a better job; the selection of appliance-type cars is overwhelming. even i was shocked when i realized that honda makes 5 different models of just the accord alone-- forget the civic, the crv, the little sport roadster thing, the element, and heaven knows what else.
so he's been researching like mad, and since i'm fascinated with cars anyway, i've been helping out a little.
we decided to eliminate the hybrids, because reliability is still a question mark, and when the battery pack goes, the consequences are severe-- when you lose the electric engine, the gas engine alone isn't really enough to get you onto a freeway safely. it would be like finding yourself driving my westy, after being used to driving an accord. now the failure should be gradual since the battery has redundancy, but there are stories of this happening on the message boards, so it does happen.
reliability is a top priority for him, as is visibility from within the car. i pointed out (against my better judgement) that trucks and SUV's have an advantage in terms of visibility because they're higher up, but he's just not a fan of that type of vehicle.
today we went to a toyota dealership and he drove two models of Scion and a Camry.
The Scion Xa is a small hatchback. The interior design is clever and makes the most of the space-- i could fit easily into the back seat with the front seat adjusted quite comfortably for me. It's a four-door which is unusual for a hatchback. However, it was completely gutless. I admonished my friend to floor it once we got out on the highway, and it was like he'd done nothing. The a/c seemed weak to me as well. He said that visibility was good and it overall had a good driving feel.
The Scion Tc is a hatchback disguised as a coupe. In fact, I think they call it a coupe. When you lift up the hatch, the whole back of the car lifts up, you can pull away a thin cloth shield, push down the back seats and you've got a bunch of space. When the seats are up, the back seat is tiny. The front seats don't roll forward when you flip them forward, meaning that access to the back seats by passengers is virtually impossible-- I didn't even try to get in. (If you people think you've got trouble getting in and out of spacepod's back seat....) The front seat has reasonable leg room, but i looked over and noticed that my friend's head was brushing the ceiling-- and he's not even 6' tall. it has a very pretty double moonroof-- front and back-- and a stylish black roof on the exterior that contrasts with the paint color. the power was exceptional-- more powerful than the camry we later drove. My friend proclaimed the visibility unacceptable due to the cramped rear side windows, and said that it's officially off his list because of that.
finally, the camry. it's roomy, my friend said he felt like he could see everything around him for miles. it felt a little under-powered compared to the Tc, and my friend agreed, but it's available with a V6. overall, he rated the driving experience kind of mushy-- more like floating than like driving. the scions were definitely better in that department.
we looked over a matrix, which is a hatchback but larger and more powerful than the scion xa. it has a hard surface in the hatch and the seats fold down perfectly flat, which i thought was very cool and highly practical. you can open either the entire hatch or just the rear window, which is also very cool. we didn't have time to drive it, but my friend said he might try to later.
Posted by lisa at August 04, 2004 06:22 PM | TrackBack
Comments
My dad loves his Matrix. He's really happy with the storage capacity.
Spacepod has the easiest back seat to get into of any two-door I've ever seen.
Posted by: Sarah on August 4, 2004 11:04 PM
ok, so a) your comment won't post right away because i have to approve it first and b) you might get a server error but your comment probably posted anyway and c) previewing doesn't work so i've removed the preview button.