Car Crazies

So last Saturday, I headed over to a friend's house to play the new Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game (the Fantasy Flight 2010 edition, not any of the earlier Sid Meier games, or even the classic Avalon Hill Civilization). Seemed like a good way to spend an afternoon, after getting plenty of food and family for our American Thanksgiving. A clear, cool, sunny day, heading down a neighberhood street on my way across town when I caught a brief sight of a big ol' Mercedes Benz SUV coming flying thru a stop sign on my right. I had barely enough time to say "Holy Shit!" when BAM!, the car slammed into my passenger side rear door / tire, spun me around 180 degrees, and we both slid to a halt.

To cut a long boring story short, I'm fine but the poor Mazda3 is totaled. Surprisingly, I failed to get a picture of it! It doesn't look all that bad, but given the age of the car (2006) and the cost of auto repairs these days, I wasn't suprised when the insurance company told me to clean it out. Of course, I had just finished paying it off about 6 months ago and it only had about 30,000 miles on it. So it's back into the shark filled waters of new car shopping...

So I have started to research new cars. I like a hatchback, as the biggest limit I have is my hockey bag filled with goalie equipment. So a big hatchback or one of the new compact SUVs is the way to go. I'm trying to keep to around US$20,000 but it is so easy for "feature-creep" to occur, jacking the price up.

Lucky for me, the New England Auto Show opened on Wednesday. Actually, I blame my friend for the accident, as he asked a few weeks ago if I wanted to go and I said sure, which almost certainly jinxed me and my car!-) So we walked around for about 3 hours - man, there are a lot of cars! I came away with three surprises:

1. Kia sure has a lot of cars! I asked the saleswoman at the show to differentiate between the Sorento and the Sportage, but I'm not sure I got a satisfactory answer, besides the fact the Sorento is made in Georgia and the Sportage in Korea. I'm leaning towards the Sportage, as it is smaller, although I think the Sorento, is some guises gets better gas mileage and is cheaper. I also liked the Soul, although it may be too small.
2. The Hundai Elantra Touring sure is one tricked out hatchback, with heated leather seats, moonroof and everything for less than US$20,000. And it looks plenty big enough. And it is in the "electric" blue that R11.5 has become so fond of.
3. I scratched th e Nissan Rogue and Juke off my list. They both felt cramped, dark and as a Twitter-bud called it, cumbersome. And they didn't even have a Versa hatchback at the show.

R11.5, who has become my new car shopper bud, and I have test drove a couple of cars so far. We went to the Honda dealership (we own and love our Odyssey) and looked at

the Fit and the Insight. The Fit is also a remarkable value for the money, but I'm not sure it really "fits" (ha!) what I'm looking for. R11.5 talked me into test driving the Insight, which was fun, but again probably too small.

The other day we test drove the new for 2011 Mitsubishi Outlander Sport, which is a very sharp looking compact "crossover". That's where R11.5 became enamoured with the electric (or Laguna, as Mitsubishi calls it) blue, although both the Odyssey and the Mazda are blue, so I was kinda hoping for a new color. We test drove the AWD version, although for as little as I actaully drive, all-wheel drive is probably just a $2,000 affectation. I loved it, including the little shifter paddles (my Mazda had the manually shifting automatic too).

So we are off to the local Kia dealer to try out some cars. Wish us luck!