Agreed with Bing about the cartoon.
With tongue in cheek I might suggest a Smart Car and learn the blues harp…
I have a tough guy friend who was a British Commando and has seen a lot of real action. His car? A Honda Odessey minivan. His wife’s car? A Chevy Malibu. His daughter, a 5’2" physiotherapist, has a Ford F150 truck.
If your job and customer perception dictates what you should drive for best results, go that way.
His daughter, a 5'2" physiotherapist, has a Ford F150 truck.
I have 6 friends who own F150 pickups…every one is no taller then 5’6 and weigh no more then 160lbs. They feel big in their trucks.
A lot of people who felt sort of negative about minivans, but bought one anyway, ended up being true believers. There’s nothing that compares when you consider passenger and driver comfort, decent ride and lots of open space. Consider this - you make your living as performing musicians, a choice that you and you alone have made. You have created your own lives and therefore your public image, and whether you drive a minivan or a Ford F-250 makes no difference to those who put time and money into coming to see you.
I’m a 70 year old guy, and I get around town on a collection of 30 year old Honda scooters. I’m enjoying the ride, and it truly makes no difference what sort of image I have.
You owe it to to yourself to give some serious consideration to minivans. When you take out some of the seats there is a huge amount of room.
I never understood why minivans got such a “bad” reputation. I agree, they are great for storage, passengers, economy, etc.
I put “bad” in quotes because it’s a perception problem, not a bad reputation like the Yugo.
I always figured that the war on minivans was started by the marketing department of the auto industry. It’s hard to make a new minivan look different than the previous year’s model. Back in the 1950s and 1960s with body on frame construction, passenger car bodies were restyled every couple of years. Tailfins became the in thing for a couple of years and then a couple years later, tailfins were out. Wrap around windshields were the in thing and suddenly disappeared. The same thing happened with quad headlights. Well, it’s hard to put tailfins or wraparound windshields on a minivan. Hence, you declare them passe’ and steer people from a minivan to an SUV. Now we are moving people from SUVs to crossover vehicles. We had an SUV right after WWII --.it wa called a Jeep. We had crossover vehicles called Jeep Station Wagons. What we didn’t have were minivans until the VW Microbuses made the scene. Now, instead of the auto industry leading the sheep to the latest car body style, it just leads the sheep to the latest “in vehicle”,
@BilRusssell Minivans are not macho or sexy. They have the soccer mom image. Most guys would rather drive an underpowered truck than an over powered and well equipped and well handling minivan.
When I bought the first minivan, I looked at a SUV too. The care salesman asked who I was shopping for, and I said my wife. He asked what she wanted, and I said probably a minivan. He then wondered why I was looking at a SUV. Of course it was because I didn’t want a minivan. Then we bought one and I was sold on them as family transportation for 5 or more. We could carry our three children, my wife’s parents, us, and all our luggage with the minivan. The long wheelbase provides an excellent ride. If often refer to the Silhouette as our limo.
I buy a vehicle for its utility. I don’t care about style. As P.T. Keller, former president of Chrysler put it “Vehicles are to ride in, not p*ss over”. I think many people find the minivan, with its higher seating position much better for comfortably transporting passengers than most cars. Back in the 1950s, a sedan would seat 6 people. It rode on a full frame and could pull a utility trailer. Today’s cars don’t have much utility value for me.
"I have 6 friends who own F150 pickups…every one is no taller then 5’6 and weigh no more then 160lbs. They feel big in their trucks."
Mike, I suspect there’s a lot of compensating being done in those huge pickups. There’s absolutely no reason why a pickup as huge as the current F150 is necessary to pick up a few bags of fertilizer or an occasional shrub.
I agree. I don’t want a big monstrous truck and don’t tell me those monsters can pull any more than a smaller truck. Its all just sheet metal and air. Give me a smaller truck that can pull something and you don’t need a step ladder to wash it or get in. Then actually my little trailer will hold a ton which is more than an F150 monster. No?
Back in the 1950s, almost all trucks had a regular cab–2 doors and a single bench seat. Once in a great while I would see a crew cab pickup 4 doors and 2 bench seats. These trucks were owned by utility companies or railroads to transport workers and equipment. My guess is that these crew cab trucks were only available on special order back then. Sometime in the 1970s, Dodge started marketing the club cab pickups–2 doors but a rear passenger seat. Now the regular cab pickups are rare-- most pickups I see are either what we used,to call crew cab or club cab. In fact, I am not even certain that smaller truxks like the Nissan,Frontier even offer what we used to call a regular cab pickup.
I owned a Ford F-150 crew cab from the 70’s. Bought it used for $500. It was owned by the railroad. Use to have the setup to ride the rails.