Buying a Hybrid

Our new Ford C-Max SEL

It was time to buy a new car. Our wonderful 2003 Ford Taurus had 130,000 miles, and we’d put in quite a bit of money  in upkeep and repairs in the past year. Nothing unusual, just the things that start to go after that many years and miles. TIme to move on.

With all the ranting we do against fracking (our cottage is on the Marcellus Shale), the decision to go hybrid was an easy one. But could we get the mileage we wanted in the car we needed at a price we could afford?

Our priorities were –

• Price – We knew hybrid meant more money than we’d ever spent on a car before. (Our Taurus was an end of season used dealer  model for just 14K – did I mention we are cheapskates when it comes to cars? ) But there is a break even point on hybrids, and we knew we had to just do it.
• Mileage – We were looking for something comfortably above 35 MPG city and highway. The higher the better.
• Cargo room  – Our Taurus has a generous 16 foot trunk, and that’s barely enough for us on trips to the cottage, where the lack of local supermarket means schlepping groceries as well as luggage  for 4.
• Comfort – Our Taurus is really, really comfy, especially in the back seat. But our kids said they’d rather have to use a pillow in the back seat on a long ride than sit with suitcases, so cargo room was more important.
• Power Drivers Seat option  – I’m not tall. I need to pull the seat way up to drive and then back again to get out of the car comfortably  And I often adjust during the ride. I thought this would not be an issue with any model car. But I was wrong.
• Solid feel – Mr TBTAM has an issue with lighter cars for both safety and drive feel. Not a deal breaker.
• Leather interior – our Taurus leather interior still looks like new after 9 years.  No compromises on this.

Other Things We Considered

• Going electric. Unfortunately, electric batteries eat into trunk space. Also, our garage is not yet equipped to charge us. (And where they are, it’s not cheap  – $98 a month or $3 an hour for charging.) Finally, most of our driving is distance – electric shines best for commuting. We could not see an advantage to electric at this point for us in NYC.
• Giving up the car altogether. We were car-less our first 10 years in NYC, and had survived. But the price (and often limited availability) of car rentals in NYC , our addiction to Costco, and the ability to pop down to Philly and family on a moment’s notice kept us car owners.
• Diesel – we didn’t see a big advantage over hybrid, and the diesel high mileage cars were too expensive anyway.
• Non hybrid cars with good gas mileage – None came close to the hybrids we were considering in terms of fuel savings. Plus, it felt like taking baby steps –  our environmental stance demanded a leap.

Why we did not buy a Prius

We thought the Prius V had everything we needed. But not quite. Here’s why –

• The driver’s seat in the V is not power adjustable, even on the highest end model! (What’s that about, Toyota?) You need to pump a lever to raise and lower it and reach below to move it back and forth.
• The comfort factor – the Prius V had more cargo room, but less head and leg room than the C-max. We weren’t sure the added cargo space was worth it.
• The weight of the car. Mr TBTAM likes a more substantial feel to a car, and the Prius feels a lot lighter than the C-max. (Others might see this the other way around, and call the C-Max too heavy  – it’s all in the buyer’s eye…)

The 3rd generation Prius came very close to being what we wanted. It has a power drivers seat in the higher end models and beats the Cmax in mileage and price (though not by much in either). The cargo room was acceptable, and it looked great. But it is smaller, lighter and noisier than the Cmax. Most importantly to me, visibility seemed compromised – there is a blind spot on the front window if you pull up the seat as I do to drive, and the back window is split and seems small. Although they say you get used to the small rear window, I couldn’t see past the salesman in the back seat on my test drive.  (Hint to Totyota dealers – don’t sit in the middle next time you take a customer out for a test drive…)

In the end, the benefits in terms of price and mileage on the 3rd generation Prius were not enough to beat the C-Max for us.

Why we got the CMax-SEL

Mostly because I am totally in love with this car!  It has everything I want – 47 mpg city & hwy, power driver seat, decent cargo space (24.5 cu feet behind the second row), leather interior,  plus a few things I didn’t know I wanted  – back up camera, automatic foot operated hatch and sun roof.  And I could have given up the sun roof, but it really brightened the interior in a way I did not expect. (Another hint to dealers – if you want folks to buy sun roofs, take them out in a model that has one on a sunny October day…)

It seems as if I am not the only one who loves the C-max. While we were waiting for the salesman, another couple test drove the car we were looking at and by the time we came back from our test drive, they had already put an offer down on it. But that’s okay -it had options we did not need (like park assist – we know how to park, thank you). The one we’ve ordered will come in at our price limit – even with the sun roof – thanks to a dealer rebate.

I’ll post again after we’ve gotten our new car and driven it awhile

I am no stranger, after all, to post purchase regret. And real world mileage  can differ from posted MPG’s – though knowing my husband, he’ll be one of those hybrid drivers who tweak their driving style to get the best milage they can.

So stay tuned…

Now for the real question –

Does anyone want to buy a well-maintained used 2003 Taurus?

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Here’s a comparison on the three vehicles we looked at on Cars.com. And for the record, no one paid me to write this post. I just wanted to share our process thinking it may interest others making a similar purchase decision.