Katie Allison-Granju is looking for a minivan. For some reason Blogger wouldn’t accept my comment, so I’m posting it here.
Minivan-wise, the Toyota Sienna and Honday Odyssey get Consumer Reports’ top ratings. CU also likes the Kia/Hyundia (they’re basically the same van). It has great safety ratings, but the reliability isn’t so good.
We got a 2006 Odyssey and love it. My mother-outlaw got a 2006 Sienna and she seems to like it. Incidentally, both were bought used in 2006. We got ours from a Honda dealership, and my mother-outlaw got hers from CarMax. She had a really good experience there. Everyone says it’s about the best used car experience you can get. Both vans were factory-certified used, so they had factory warranties. Honda doubles their drivetrain warranty on certified vehicles, so we got a 100,000 mile warranty instead of 50,000 miles on a new Honda.
We liked the Honda dealership, but it took us six hours to close the deal even though we walked onto the lot knowing the exact car we wanted. Part of that was us negotiating hard, but it takes a long time to buy a new car. Take food and water. If you need to talk privately with your spouse, go outside. I think Uncle’s right – they may bug those salesrooms.
I’ve sold our last two cars in the newspaper rather than trading them in. It takes time and you have to meet a lot of people, but you can get a lot more money for your car. I got $3700 for my Camry versus the $1800 a dealer offered me on trade-in. When selling through the paper, be safe – don’t let people talk you into meeting somewhere strange. Meet them at a place of your choosing where other people will be around.
For new or used cars, Consumer Reports is a great research tool. For used cars, I always get the CarFax report and take the car to a dealership for an inspection. The cost for the Camry inspection was about $60 as I recall. The inspection won’t find everything, unfortunately. I had massive problems out of that car two years later – radiator problems, a blown engine that cost $1900 to replace, a worn-out brake caliper, busted antenna motor, and a bad AC compressor that was too expensive to fix, which is why I finally sold it. After that experience I was willing to fork over the money for a new car (or almost new, with a factory warranty).
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Can’t speak for most of these vehicles but I can for the KIA. Avoid at all cost! Worst made vehicle I’ve ever had the displeasure to own. Holds no value on resale. bought mine new and sold a year later at a tremendous loss (but would have lost more in parts, time and service). The list of things that went wrong on it are a mile long. The 10 year 100,000 mile warrenty is worthless. Only recommend them to people you hate.
We’ve had great satisfaction with our Ford Windstars (we’ve had a couple). The model has since been superceded by the new Freestar, but the safety ratings are consistently among the highest around.
Diamondback: yeah, the CU owner reliability survey didn’t look good. It’s interesting about the Kia resale value. I always worry about that with these newer brands.
Sometimes it is wise to buy a new car than to spend big money on a problematic car. I got my car fix and bought a new nissan brake caliper. After a week, i got more car parts problems so i immediately scrapped it.