Adding to the Fleet

When in New England, do as the New Englanders do. And what, you might ask, is it that New Englanders do? They drive “Subies.” New Englanders have long been fans of all-wheel-drive vehicles. There are lots of hills around and, when winter dumps snow and ice on the roads, they can be a challenge to negotiate. But New Englanders also tend to be of the tree-hugger variety. Many of them would rather be caught dead than driving a truck-sized SUV. That’s why they drive Subarus. We wanted to fit in (pun intended) so we went out and bought one too.

Our Jetta, which we are still very fond of, was getting to be a bit on the small side. With K’s car seat behind the driver’s seat, I could hardly get in and out from behind the wheel. And if the front passenger seat was too far back, L didn’t have enough room to climb into his own seat. We knew we would need a bigger vehicle sooner or later and, after convincing ourselves that we could afford one sooner, decided to start shopping.

We quickly realized that we weren’t going to be able to get everything we wanted. For one, nothing that was going to be a legitimate size upgrade from the Jetta was going to be able to touch its gas-mileage. A few of the larger 5-seaters we drove were rated to get almost 30 mpg (miles per gallon) on highway driving, but anything with more than 5 seat belts barely broke the 20 mpg threshold. We also realized that the only vehicles that were going to drive like our Autobahn-engineered VW, weren’t going to be big enough or tough enough to haul us and all of our camping gear on future road trips and camping excursions. In the end, we tried to get a bit of everything: more room, respectable mileage, and something that wouldn’t balk at a heavier load. We settled on a Subaru Outback.

We had fun plying the salesmen with questions they’d never fielded before. Would the warranty be honored in the event that the car moved to Canada? Does the car come equipped with a block heater? (Around here, block heaters are optional equipment.) Negotiating a price wasn’t quite as much fun. But in the end we were confident we got a good price. We drove the Outback home on Thursday after waiting for a few days for the dealership to order the block heater and install it. We cringe as we watch L climb into the vehicle with his snow and dirt covered boots, but it’s fun to drive and we can’t wait to take it camping.