car shopping

More and more car shopping. I don't want to be shopping for a car, I want us to have chosen one and taken it home and to have found that we really love it.............

Saturday we drove a Rav (no -- the inside of the driver door sticks out into tall-driver knee area), a Matrix (ok -- touchy seat position adjustment so that headrest isn't driving me crazy), a Versa (we like that one the best so far, I think), a Forester (ok, but we really don't like the way it looks, especially inside), and a Jeep (we drove a Patriot this time, because they didn't have a Compass for us to try, but we were told everything about the way it sits, drives, handles would be the same. At least it was orange. :-) )

We were surprised to not like the Rav, after we sat in it before and liked it ok. Oh well.

The Versa is a quite small car, but has a lot of passenger room despite that. It is inexpensive, too, and has really good mileage. Very good visibility, too, in front and both sides, for both drivers. I liked the way it handled (and that little turning radius is nice!).

The Jeep is the other one we were the most comfortable in. It costs more than the Versa, and gets substantially worse mileage (27 vs 35, highway). It is at our 1-mile-from-our-house Chrysler dealership, though. We like the people there, we like the service dept, and it's nice to be able to drop the car off for repair and walk home...... We had the Voyager there on Saturday to get a new battery (it has eaten two batteries, with no symptoms at all until you are somewhere and it just won't start -- not even with a jump). The last new battery was about 4 years ago, I think, so I wanted to replace it this time *before* I was stranded somewhere....... The guy didn't charge me for labor, even though the terminals were corroded enough that he had to work to get the old battery unhitched..........

So we are influenced by all of that................

We want to just love one of these, and so far, we just don't.

Sigh.