I rode to York Beach ME from Manchester, NH (about 60 miles) in a friends brand new RAV4, and I found it noisy and too firm… even with three adults in it.
I’ve owned a Camry and it was pretty smooth and quiet for its time.
I drove a Mercedes mid-range sedan for a week some years back and it was a total disappointment. Rode smoothly and quietly, but the seats weren’t that great. Couldn’t get comfortable. And the performance was weak.
I rode in the back of my brother’s brand new full-size Buick some years back and found the ride extremely poor and unable to go over even modest bumps without bottoming out with a loud thunk. I do believe that current Buicks are now much better. But his was a surprising disappointment.
I had a 2005 Corolla brand new for only two months… the seats and ride were crippling my bad back, so I traded it in for my 2005 Scion tC. The Scion had a far, far, far better ride and was far more comfortable. I still love it 11 years later.
Every single car is totally different. And everybody’s impressions and preferences are totally different. For the OP that means you’re just going to have to spend some weekends doing test drives. There’s no way around it. Strangers cannot pick your perfect car for you. Sorry, but we all have the same challenge. You can accept the reality that you’ll have to make your own choice or risk having a total stranger make it for you.
When I say Toyota and Lexus… Is the first vehicle that pops to mind their wonky semi off road AWD tin can ?
I should have been more specific… Toyota Camry, Camry Solara, Avalon… Pick any Lexus really…
If I had my Druthers I would have been excluding the non traditional vehicles from the list and the RAV fits into that category in my mind…so does that Toyota FJ reincarnation
Last summer we rented a Huyundai Santa Fe Sport. It was a 2016 that had only 200 miles at the start of the trip. We added an additional 2000 miles. We found that SUV acceptably quiet.
I remember some time back where Consumer Reports favored cars with body on frame construction claiming that this construction better isolated the passengers from road noise than unit body construction,.
I just had a vision of the future where, instead of fart can mufflers, the younger crowd is changing out the inductors on their inverters so they purposely sing under load. “Man, did you hear the whine coming from his inverter! That thing sings!!”
When I say Toyota and Lexus… Is the first vehicle that pops to mind their wonky semi off road AWD tin can ?
They’re probably addressing the OP topic- quiet mid/compact SUVs or lack thereof…
“I remember some time back where Consumer Reports favored cars with body on frame construction claiming that this construction better isolated the passengers from road noise than unit body construction.”
Unibody construction can actually “telegraph” noises from one area of the structure to another, thus exacerbating noise problems, and this can take a lot of extra time, money, and effort for car makers to eliminate after they have come up with the basic design. That is one of the reasons why noise, harshness, and vibration are more pronounced in smaller/cheaper cars, where the development budget and the target price of the vehicle don’t permit the mfr to “engineer-out” the noise problems.
However, the Unit body Nash,and Hudson.cars of the early 1950s were exceptions. These cars were unit body construction. Our neighbors had a,1952 Nash Ambassador and I had an Uncle who owned a 1951 Hudson Commodore 6. I rode in both those cars when they were new and both were very quiet and smooth riding for the time. However, in the early 1960s, the Studebaker Lark, with its body on frame construction had a much quieter ride than the other compacts of that day. My dad bought a new Studebaker Lark in 1963. It had as much room in the cabin as much bigger cars, but the trunk was a little skimpy. Dad’s Lark was a V8 and was as quiet a ride as most bigger cars. It had a manual transmission and really accelerated well.
Both Nash and Hudson did a lot of engineering work on their unit-body cars before they were introduced to the public. If they hadn’t spent a lot of time and money on silencing chassis noise, then they wouldn’t have fared as well in the marketplace.
I can recall reading somewhere (Car & Driver? Road & Track?) that with the advent of computer-aided design, today’s engineers have been able to figure out that the step-down Hudsons could have been built with ~1,000 lbs less weight, without sacrificing their sturdiness. More than likely, everything on those Hudsons was over-engineered (in a modern sense), just to…be on the safe side…but in the process all of that extra mass may have helped to make them more quiet.
@VDCdriver You and I are probably the only two people left on the planet that appreciates the fine engineering that went into the Nash and Hudson. Unfortunately, it was hard to change the body style of the unit frame cars and the other manufacturers changed body styles every two years and many people didn’t want to drive an out of date car. Hudson used the same body from 1948 through 1954 and the Nash body waa used from 1952 through 1957 for the Hudson’s.
TT, your vision isn’t entirely unique. Complaints about the Tesla sneaking up on blind people (and others) have initiated discussions about requiring artificially generated noises from EVs for safety. While I was visiting my son in Southern CA, a Tesla rolled behind me in a parking lot and I never heard a thing. In NH we have sand and cracks and other things that create sounds when rolled over, but in that parking lot there was only silence. I’m just glad I didn’t take a few steps backward. I’d be a pancake.
Speaking of adding noise to electric cars, I was thinking of the ice cream truck tune. The marketing genius that came up with it just died a little bit ago.
I’d prefer some type of “collision avoidance” detection and then generate a noise while taking action rather than some artificial continuous noise pollution.
It isn’t really. For those who cannot see a vehicle, they have to rely on sounds. They make safety decisions based on these sounds. A car that makes no more noise than a bicycle could be extremely dangerous for them.
There’s a huge difference between a 25 pound bicycle that can stop in a matter of feet being piloted at 12 mph by an undistracted and alert person with 180+ degree unobstructed peripheral vision and a 4,000 pound vehicle that takes a long distance to stop being piloted at 40 mph by a possibly-distracted human with largely obstructed vision who’s operating largely on “auto pilot” anyway. Much of what experienced drivers do is programmed reactions, but a cyclist is always alert.
I speak from many years of experience on this issue. Get on the bike and the heart starts pumping, the eyes open, and you’ll wake up totally, even after a long day’s work. I may have been half asleep driving to my ride after work, but I’ve never been half asleep in the saddle.
The two cannot be compared, and I think it would be heartless to ignore the personal safety requests of the visually handicapped. Generated noise doesn’t have to be irritating or loud to address safety concerns. Only recognizable.
You make good points, but we don’t need more noise in our lives. But I spend time searching for restaurants without loud music (A difficult search these days).
We have some good drive ins in our town, pick your own music on your radio, Holiday inn Prority club member, was in Cafbondale, the attached restaurant was fat bottom betty, and 24 hours of fat bottom girls song in the parking lot was a complaint in my review.
