One car or two?

Hadn't heard anything about that, but since super cold around here is 25-30 degrees, it may not have been an issue anyway.

 

We did lots of research and narrowed it to the Honda CRV and Ford Escape. Bought the Escape. It was an either/or situation.

 

The Escape is the one American brand I may look at, just because two of my coworkers have them and they both seem to really like them.

 

My wife and I kind of lusted after the Escape, but we were scared off by the totally negative reviews in Consumer Reports. I would hope they're better built these days.

That's why we went with the Subaru, which gets great marks year after year.

 

Never ceases to amaze me how many $50,000+ cars have below average (or much below average) reliability, according to CR.

 

King of this segment, Range Rovers.

 

Driving a 2011 Honda CR-V. Have done some work to the alignment (mostly due to the fact that my local roads really suck) but hopefully the engine and transmission keep going for another few years. It's at 120K miles.

 

I just want my car to go from Point A to Point B and have good mileage. My wife worries about the rest.

We have a '14 CRV and '10 Civic. Going to drive both into the ground. About 95K on each right now.

 

Regular oil changes (and no eating in your car ) and you should get 200k on each no problem.

 

I'd probably rather have one really nice car than two good ones, but ideally I'd love to have a really nice car and a fun car.

As to the discussion of American vs imported, I've owned three Mustangs ('89, '94, '05), a 2012 Mercedes C Class, a 2014 Infiniti QX60 and currently a '20 Mercedes GLE. I had plenty of problems with my first two Mustangs, but I bought both of them used (the '89 was eight years old with more than 100K on it and cost me just a grand). I bought my '05 brand new and loved every second of it. Never had a problem with it and only moved on from it because the backseat didn't fit my kid's car seat (also the reason for the move to an SUV in 2015).

The first Mercedes and the Infiniti were both certified pre-owned and I never had a problem with either of them. But both were only 2 years old when I bought them, so I wouldn't have expected any issues. I serviced the CPOs at the dealership, which probably helped, while I stupidly entrusted the Mustangs to local mechanics, who invariably tried to screw me over (and usually succeeded).

My dad has had three trucks (all Dodge Rams) my entire life and done pretty well with them. My mother keeps buying Chryslers even though one literally burned to the ground and the door panel fell off another while driving.

 

I love getting the calls from the dealer when they ask if I would like to trade in my CRV. I just laugh and say, nope, you can stop calling. I'll call you. They get this funny taken-aback laugh and tell me to have a nice day.

 

I'm of the mindset that car owners should either get a new one every four to five years, while their old vehicle still retains a decent amount of its trade-in value, or run it all the way into the ground. Keeping it for 6-8 years and getting just $5K on trade seems like a waste.

It would be interesting to see if there's any data about the optimal time to trade in.