[mikester]

Alright - The wife and I are considering replacing The Xterra with a more economical car.

We've got a child on the way so we want to have some space (which the SUV is great for) but we also want better gas mileage as most of her driving is city driving.

Here's the list of problems.

We want the car payment to be low. We're starting a family and just bought a house. We both make good money but we want the new car payment to be less than the Xterra (~just over $400).

The Xterra (2001, SE 4x4) isn't worth as much as we owe on it. Typical as the used car market is so upside down of late (Except for my Porsche of course) the Xterra is a horrible trade-in and when I tried to do a private sale on it I failed miserably. It's been about a year since I attempted that via the online version of the auto trader. Had a few bites but nobody serious. I still might attempt it again as it is a popular SUV around these parts and it's in great shape.

The Xterra is due for some major maintenance. At 60k the tires are ready to be replaced and the fluids all around need to be replaced as well as a few other tune up style requirements. So - the choice is now - do all the maintenance or trade it in. If I tried to sell it now I'd have to get those things done to it for it to be sellable.

If I can trade it in and spend that money I would have spent on the maintenance to get out of it and into a car the wife likes then I'll be cosmically ahead.

That leads to the next problem. The cars we like and the cars that meet the requirements we've set don't match at all.

Requirements:

~$20k
~24 MPG city (give or take a few)
Manual Transmission

She really likes the Passat wagon and in fact she had a leased Passat when we met. We let that lease run out since I had the Xterra and the Porsche. Now she drives the Xterra (and the Porsche whenever she wants to) but she's a typical California granola head girl (I love it though) and she wants something that fits her ideals. The problem with the Passat wagon is that it doesn't get decent enough mileage for her so now she's looking at the Jetta wagon. We both like it but we're not sure it's big enough so I think we’ll try to test drive one this weekend.

She also loves the Honda CR-V's but particularly the older body style. Problem with the Honda is that they don't seem to come with a manual in the 2WD models. I need to research that one a bit more though.

Other than that – what she likes is limited (I can’t fault her really considering my choice of transportation), she doesn’t find any of the American cars particularly attractive and she feels ordinary in considering the run of the mill sedan.

So, after all that she came to me and suggested that we look into a lease of something like the Jetta wagon (If we like it) which is what I was considering as well. My experiences with leases so far have not been terribly positive but not terribly negative either. The lease on her Passat was good and if it wasn’t a 4motion V6 that got poor city mileage we would have bought it. So – our thought is to lease something for a year or two and then revisit it at that time when hopefully the hybrid Market may be a little better or the conventional cars are a little more attractive.


I’m also looking at the used cars I know she likes (Jettas and CR-Vs) to see if maybe we can buy something outright reasonably and then just attempt to sell the Xterra again privately (likely at a loss).

Whatcha think?