Back when my smallest daughter was just about to be born, we had to trade-in our small 4-door sedan for a mini-van.  With two real small children at the time, and another one just about ready to arrive we needed a mini-van as much as I didn’t really want one.  That was way back in 2000 and we did end up getting a Chevy Venture.  It has been a really great vehicle with no major problems, and I have problem invested less than $1500 over the past 8 years into it. 

So now it’s past 150,000 miles on it, and although it still runs, I see some issues starting to crop up, and since my wife has to go to Orlando for meetings sometimes, it was time for a new car.  I hate car shopping, it’s always a time wasting experience, but necessary.  We hit a few places over the weekend, and the place we liked was the Saturn dealership down the road.  We looked at some vehicles and went home and also looked through their online inventory.

First vehicle was the new Astra,which priced out wasn’t too bad, but it was still a bit small for my needs.  After looking through the inventory we saw a ‘08 Vue, slightly used with low mileage and a low price.  Call them back and said that was the one we wanted, and made an appointment for later the next day.  While my wife was driving out of our subdivision the front tired shredded off.  After getting the thing off in this incredible heat and humidity I come to discover the spare was flat.  After quite a few “colorful metaphors”, I managed to get just enough air in it to make it to the place place which is just a minute or so away.

So of course I had to spend $80 getting a new tire for something I would be trading in, in just a matter of hours.  But I certainly didn’t want to drive to the dealership on a spare tire, plus I had other places to go that day.  Talked to the salesperson, which by the way, wasn’t pushy and nice to deal with and he said everything was good, gave me the price and payments, and just had to come in and sign some papers.  Everything went pretty smooth until it came time to show insurance.  The primary insurance was in my name, and the insurance company would not tell the dealership that my wife was covered since the car was going to be in her name.  I had enough so I called the people with the really cool lizard with an accent, and got new (and cheaper) insurance in less than 10 minutes.

So now we have our nice new car.

After we got home I was on IRC and was asked the question, “why did I buy an SUV”.  My first response is “why not?”  The Vue gets decent mileage, and we are mostly local drivers.  Most importantly I have 3 young children and a small car just doesn’t cut it.  Of course I would love to have a super-efficient car, but the fact is they really don’t exist.  Hybrids are over-priced, and the long-term cost doesn’t save you anything.  Now the person asking the question didn’t have a negative attitude about it, it was pure curiosity, but what is the issue with people who have some type of problem with buying an SUV?