During a recent trip to Washington, D.C. for Alexander’s surgery with Dr Bruce, one thing became readily apparent and that was that our family hauler required a bit of an upgrade.
You see, it was perfectly OK for four people but quite often, we find that our party is actually a party of five now. And that’s something that the Escape just wasn’t really capable of handling, particularly when two of them are in car seats (and no, surfing I-95 on the top of the Escape really isn’t an option…watch out for that low bridge!… nor is it really cool to strap someone in a rocking chair up there like Granny from “The Beverly Hillbillies”).
So here we are in Washington trying to figure out how we’re going to get five people home in a vehicle that only seats four. Gramps ended up helping us out tremendously when Alexander’s discharge was delayed but the writing was very definitely on the wall…we were going to have to take the dreaded next step in our family’s hauler.
A couple of months later, it was time to return to Washington, D.C. for a follow-up appointment with Dr Bruce (who was very happy with Alexander’s recovery) so we hired a Chrysler Town and Country. We had cargo room to spare and everyone was pretty comfortable all the way to Baltimore where we were staying so we knew we were on the right track.
So off to the dealers we go to have a look-see at minivans. It was readily apparent that the industry has progressed quite a bit from the old Ford Aerostar minivans by tempering passenger hauling capacities with a nod to catering to the type of passengers riding in the van. Back then, you were lucky if you got rear audio controls and headphones and if you were really lucky, you could actually control your A/C back there as well. But other than that, the vans really had no personality to them other than they weren’t a big 15-passenger bus. And if you were looking for performance, handling, and comfort…just imagine flying a fully-loaded C-130 Herky Bird with those big Allison turboprops chewing up the air. The C-130 isn’t fast and it isn’t pretty and it sure as heck isn’t quiet…but it does the job.
So it’s not terribly surprising that minivans would have a bit of that stigma of mommy van or Chevy Chase’s family truckster.
Hoo boy, have the times changed and for the better! To borrow a phrase from dear old deceased Oldsmobile…this isn’t your parent’s minivan. A lot of attention has been spent on making the experience of riding in one of these vans as enjoyable as possible. There are entertainment options that are just mind blowing…DVD players with screens that drop down from the roof (or are on the back of the front-seat head rests), amazing audio systems, the works.
But they didn’t stop there…there has been serious attention paid to the performance and handling of the modern minivan. And to top it off, the one thing minivans do very well…cargo hauling…is much improved by making it convenient to drop seats out of the way for increased cargo hauling. It used to be that you had to remove the third row of seats entirely…now they fold down into the floor and provide a big cargo area.
Very quickly, it became obvious that we’d be choosing between the Honda Odyssey and the Toyota Sienna for our first minivan. They’re consistently top-rated in the minivan category and the quality of construction also speaks highly of them. We were looking for an eight-passenger configuration so we could put a car seat within arm’s reach of the driver seat and a drop-down DVD screen were necessities.
We took out the Odyssey first and it has a very nice ride. But two things pretty much ruled it out…lack of LATCH hooks where we needed them so we could drop the entire third row into the floor if needed and it’s easier for Daddy to get into the back row of the Sienna when it comes to putting Nicholas into his car seat without gratuitous mooning of wherever we happen to be!
So now the fun begins…dealing with dealers. Honestly, a root canal is probably more enjoyable an activity than dealing with car dealers. There is a reason they’re not particularly well-liked or trusted. Visit a few of them who are selling the same make of car and you’ll hear just as many stories and one gets weary about hearing the same sob stories about how they have to keep the lights burning and the secretarial pool typing. And mind you, I actually like haggling over the price.
A little side story here, if I may. When we ended up with the Escape, we actually had no intention to buy a vehicle the last weekend of 2002. None at all! But a vehicle was at the garage for repairs and the guy said they were dealing so we figured why not. That test drive was interesting to say the least. The first guy (imagine Lurch from The Addams Family) who knew even less about the Escape than we did and had a pathological aversion to anyone taking a left turn on their test drive). So we finish driving an Escape and an Explorer (which Julia hated) and then we sit down with the dealer who then tells us why we have to pay a documentation fee so that he can keep the lights on, etc. We finally get this bozo to name a price and he has an inspired idea…send the puppy home with the girl and she’ll be hooked. So he lets us take the Escape with us for an extended test drive over the weekend. The next day, we discover that Capital Ford is actually open and they have an almost identically configured Escape and he beats the other guy’s price by quite a bit provided we do the deal that day. So we even though we normally don’t do big deals without thinking about it overnight…we figured we’d already done that with the other deal and so…why not?
Imagine this…two nearly identically configured blue Escapes are now in our possession…one we actually own and one we’re returning the next day to the first dealer. And that first guy was pretty irate that he didn’t close the deal he obviously counted as his. He kept going on about how he came to the price we wanted (obviously not…he went to the price he was willing to go, not the price we ultimately paid!). But then it got truly bizarre…the idiot sales manager starts announcing to the world that our deal was the second he lost that week to the competition…thereby telling everyone who is dealing and who isn’t! It was truly weird, to say the least.
Anywho, car dealers. Icky! As in below pond scum icky! But a necessary evil. So off we go to chase down a salsa red Sienna LE with the packages that we want. This is a chase that would lead us through their website to find out what Toyotas are available in the Southeast and then three dealers (including one at Leith Toyota in North Raleigh who started wigging out on us when we pointed out his numbers didn’t make a whole lot of sense).
But after a long search, we finally our van configured how we wanted it. And the van was well worth the wait (as it was actually built to order at the factory). A dream to drive, quieter than we remembered, and with plenty of room for everyone to ride comfortably and with tons of room for cargo, too.
And the beauty part of it all is that Julia finally has a vehicle that isn’t blue. 🙂
