What makes this your car?
I recently switched from a Suzuki Spacia to a Nissan Sakura.
In Japan, the roads are narrow, so a Kei car is very convenient.
Our family car is a 2005 Acura MDX. Best snow car I’ve ever driven, seats 7. Got it in 2013 with 68k miles. Now has 152k, only work I’ve had to do to it is routine maintenance. That did include the timing belt replacement and I wish every motor was engineered like that one.
We got it because of the “seats 7”, known good safety and AWD performance, and low mileage. The price was right and it remains one of my favorite purchases yet. It’s not very efficient but it’s powerful as hell which is really nice in the Colorado mountains.
Seems like I remember fitting a queen size mattress flat across in the back of mine… May be misremembering, but it was a great vehicle overall. Until the transmission choked up on the freeway and I couldn’t trust it not suddenly breaking down on me.
Maybe a double, but I doubt a queen.
2015 Honda Civic SI - best sports car I could get for the price. Great value car; still running perfectly almost 10 yrs later (afai
kct). The interior was also much better compared to others.Probably not getting a new car ever due to all the “smart” features cars come with that I really don’t like.
I drive a 2018 Subaru Forester. I got it because I wanted a SUV with AWD and a turbo charger. My previous vehicle was a Camaro, and while I loved driving it, having a RWD car in the winter sucks, and I had recently bought a house, so having a vehicle that can carry more than just groceries made sense.
I was driving the Camaro around Xmas time and there was a light dusting of snow on the highway. I hit a patch of it and started to fish tail, and that scared the hell out of me, so I traded it for the Forester the following fall. The Forester has handled any conditions I’ve come across so far like a champ, including heavy rain, snow, ice, and muddy hillsides.
Trading the Camaro in and getting the Forester marked the transition (in my mind) from being a young adult, to becoming an older, more sensible one. I was driving home from work one day, and a Camaro passed me on the highway. I couldn’t help but sigh and ask myself why I had to get old. The Forester is a good vehicle and very nice (got the XT Touring package), but the Camaro was way more fun to drive, and I still miss it. I’d like to get another sports car in the future, but we’ll see if that happens.
Tires make all the difference. Both the size/proportion and materials.
I’ve had RWD cars that were beasts in the snow (East Coast ice no less) because they were near perfect weight distribution and had the best winter tires on the market (Nokian).
I’ve had AWD cars that sucked, because the car was poorly balanced, the tire sidewall was too small (so the tire can’t flex much), entry level winter tires (rubber was harder), and stupid electronic traction control that tried to out think the driver but just got in the way.
RWD will still usually be more challenging to drive than AWD (I think even more so with RWD cars post 2000), though some AWD systems can be unpredictable. Part of the issue with newer RWD cars is the tire sizes - it can be hard to get proper winter tires (plus they cost a lot). I’ve seen some cars for which winter tires didn’t exist, or were exorbitantly expensive to get (it’s assumed by both car and tire manufacturers that these cars won’t be driven in snow).
Fortunately Subaru uses a dead simple AWD system (basically open diffs at each end) - the most complex thing they do is use the brakes for traction control/torque distribution, which is less likely (In my experience) to get in the way than things like electronic diffs (can you tell I’m a fan of Subaru AWD?).
I’ve driven RWD sports cars in the snow with ease. Tires are aboslutely everything. People tend to ignore their tires for WAY too long before getting them replaced, and/or get shitty all seasons that suck in every condition possible.
The trend of “I need AWD SUV because snow” terrifies me because people are buying bigger, heavier, and worse handling cars when they really just need better tires. A FWD sedan with good tires will do WAY better than an AWD SUV with crappy tires. The only upside is people will tend to put better tires on their SUV because it’s more expensive than their shitty sports car/sedan.
I drove an RWD sports car in Canadian winters, and despite researching tires and getting the best I could find, stop and go traffic on snowy hills was stressful.
That said, people who think an SUV is gonna make driving in snow safer are just not thinking at all.
I got an AWD sedan to replace my RWD coupe.
Daily: 2018 2.5 Outback. It’s nice, comfy, reliable, and overall an amazing daily driver.
Fun car: 1994 Mazda Miata. It’s a Miata.
Jealous. I have a 2011 prht and it’s amazing and a much better car in a lot of respects, but NA Miatas are just the best.
It’s a Miata.
Let’s go!
It’s a Miata
'Nuff said (I’m only slightly jealous). A car that’s undetappreciated by too many gear heads. It’s a modern version of a 1960’s Lotus. Love it
1994 Miata
I wrecked my car recently and this might be the new one if I can’t fix it. Did you get a 94 for the reasons I think you got a 94?
94-97 have the bigger 1.8 motor which I wanted. Coincidentally the 94 was the first year to switch to the new freon for the AC system so if I need to get it recharged (which I do) I don’t have to pay an arm and a leg for ancient AC that won’t even work well.
The guy I bought it from had 4 Miatas and actually prefers the 1.6 since you have to work harder for the speed, but the car is slow enough as is. It doesn’t need to be any slower.
If I’m not mistaken, the 94 is also the only year to have the 1.8 but still using OBD rather than OBDII, which supposedly makes it easier to slap a turbo in.
Preferring the slower version is wild, haha. I’ll be moving from a VQ platform so losing ~200HP is going to be an adjustment.
Just wanted to pop in and say I have a 95 with the 1.8; It’s OBD1.
Interesting! Any idea if it’s uncommon or anything? From what I’d read (which is admittedly not a lot), 95 is when they’d switched to OBDII, but maybe they made the change in the middle of the production cycle?
You know, I’m not certain on that. Now I’m gonna have to do some reading! I was just happy it had that combo when I bought it.
I think 96 was the first model year that had it. But the OBD2 mandate took effect in 1995 (for the 96 model year).
That said I’m not turboing the car and it currently has a check engine light so obd2 would be really nice right now.
2021 Chevy Bolt. Traded in a 1999 beater for it during the gas pipeline crisis. It’s a wonderful, simple, cheap car. I haven’t had any issues with it - it just gets the job done. I charge it for free at work every week or two, so I don’t even have to pay for fuel. I figure I’m gonna drive it til the bottom rusts through or the batteries die.
Good luck on both. My 2017 bolt has 321,000kms on it, driven in very rough winters and charged every day in cold weather, every other day in summer. Still gets 450kms in the summer. Still doesn’t have rust anywhere on it. No repairs, just maintenance (minus one front spring). My daughter’s likely taking it once she gets her license in 2 years.
My 2005 highlander has cost me nothing but tires, fuel and batteries. Oh, and a serpentine belt. Very reliable and gas efficient and doubles as a bit of a truck as needed. I doubt I’ll do this well on my next vehicle.
I don’t. I tried for the license but it’s too hard and the instructor is an asshole. I hate the lack of control and pressure. I will never drive and that limits my life. We have a car at home but nobody uses it due nobody having a driving license. The times I have to go on early shift my uncle, angry, drives me to my job. I wish I would get fired already so I don’t have to deal with this pressure
Do you live in America or do you live in one of the places where they actually require you to be a skilled and competent driver before you can drive?
I don’t live in America
Is a bicycle an option to get to work? I’m guessing there’s no bus option nearby or running early enough to be of use to you.
I use my bike to get around my entire city. I even built a cargo trailer for picking stuff up. It’s not the norm, but I get to places I need to be in roughly the same time I would had I driven.
Well
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It’s not, it’s 2 towns far and it’s cold at 5 am
Ah well I can see that kind of distance being an issue. While I’d say cold is a solvable problem with bar mitts and stuff, that time of day is certainly dark.
I don’t know your area of course, but maybe there’s an early morning commuter train or bus or something that could get you closer? For a time I rode to a station 20 minutes away, hopped on transit, then got off and rode another 15 minutes to get where I was going.
Maybe carpool? Though it might be unlikely any of your coworkers also live in your town.
I haven’t driven in over 20 years—my current personal transportation is a pair of freeskates.
Our family car is a Nissan Murano. One of the few 5 seaters wide enough to fit 3 car seats. I also have a LWB Nissan titan that I love to death, but is always giving me shit, and I just don’t utilize enough to justify keeping. Once I fix what ever the hell is currently wrong with it it’s getting sold :(
1999 Ford F350 crew cab, long box diesel. I sometimes need to tow a heavy trailer and turns out most rental trucks don’t allow towing, getting them scratched or any of the other reasons to own a truck. I have had it for about 15 years and put maybe 40k miles on it, so it isn’t worth having any other car. Besides that 7.3 is the best engine Ford ever made.
Used to have the 2000 version. Amazing trucks, really.
2008 BMW 328i. I bought it used back in 2011 and it still cost almost as much as I made in a year at that time, but I really wanted it and otherwise I lived very modestly.
It’s such a fun car. I have the manual transmission and the sport suspension, and I love driving it. With that said, it’s not a practical car. Only I can drive it because no one else in my family knows how to drive a manual, and the sport suspension makes the car quite uncomfortable when going over any bumps. (I tell passengers “I paid extra for that” while driving through rough areas.) Oh, and forget about driving it in snow. I tried that and spun off the road several times before learning my lesson.
This car is almost 17 and while it was quite reliable for most of that time, now it’s at the point where everything is breaking all at once. I refuse to replace it because I can’t justify buying another rear-wheel-drive manual-transmission sporty car (one of the very few models still built like that) either to other people or to myself, but I still want to own that sort of car. I guess I’ll keep spending more than it’s worth on it… I just spent $340 that way today.
I drove a 328i for a few years in N. Alberta many years ago, winters and all. You just start out in 2nd instead of first and don’t do anything sudden. You get used to how much pedal to get it drifting in the snow and you could make some neat moves, especially when parallel parking.
I concede that you’re a better driver than I am because I don’t think I could reliably control the car on snow even in ideal conditions, but how did you drive for years without needing to do anything sudden?
I have this strategy where I put myself in the drivers seat of every vehicle around me, and think to myself “what is the stupidest thing I could do right now” and then I know exactly what they’ll do and have an escape plan ready.
And I’m not even being terribly sarcastic about that, it works way too well.
But seriously, have an escape route ready all the time. Riding a motorbike helps you think about how everyone else is trying to kill you at all times.
I have three vehicles right now.
My daily driver is a 2020 Chevy Malibu. It is spacious, fast, and comfortable, and it gets pretty good gas mileage. About 30 miles per gallon on the highway and about 22 in the city.
I have a pickup truck, which is a 2004 f150. It’s a good vehicle for hauling furniture or helping friends move or for the occasional camping trip. It’s four-wheel drive. It has rear seats, and honestly other than the fact that it’s a relatively slow vehicle and that it gets horrible fuel mileage at like 17 mpg combined, I enjoy having it.
Finally, I have a project / fun car, which is a yellow 1986 Jeep CJ7. Has the inline slant 6 4.2 258 motor, hardtop, and is constantly in need of repair, lol.
My hope is to have it finished up by summer and take it on a camping trip and go do a little off-roading, but for the most part it just sits in my driveway and looks beautiful.
My annual insurance runs about $2,800 for all three vehicles. If I got rid of two of them I could probably cut that down to 1200 or so.
Nisan Altima. Because I gave up driving for a decade, but then the pan happened and I was horribly isolated. I could only go to places I could reach on foot because I didn’t want to risk anything unnecessarily. After the vax arrived, I knew it was time to empower myself by having my own car again. I barely drive it, but I don’t have to fret about getting my cats to the vet or transporting large items anymore. And if another pan breaks loose, I’ll be ready.
2009 Audi A3 sportback, it was my first “nice” car.
I keep it around despite the small fortune I’ve spent in maintenance because it’s fun as hell to drive.
