Test drive Saturday

After selling their Mazda 3 to Julia, Alice and Thomas are looking for something slightly larger for their growing family. Initially, the list consisted of the Toyota Highlander Hybrid. Naturally, it's generally not a great idea to look for a family car with a list of one, so Alice looked for a bit of help via her Facebook page. The list grew to include the newish Toyota Venza, a sort of scaled down crossover vehicle with the look of a Lexus RX, and the demeanor of a car. I suggested the Subaru Outback for a more car-like option, and a Forester for something a bit more boxy and possibly space efficient. From what I gathered, Alice is looking for size and gas-mileage.

Bright and early this morning, we headed out to go check out these four options, and to drive as many as possible. I'll write just a short bit for what I thought of each car. This won't be in relation to what I drive now, because that would just be utter nonsense, but rather to each other, and to what I figure the average family of three to four might consider. Of course, I will still be biased to my ideals that traveling efficiently is always the way to go, and that one should only buy as big as they need. Smaller, lighter cars will always accelerate, brake, and turn faster, use less gas (unless the engine is piss-poor and made from the Russian 1950s) and generally be a good thing. I have never had any issues with my cars when dealing with groceries or even light furniture shopping. Anything bigger, and I wouldn't have been able to drive the object home without a truck anyway. True as it may be that I do not have kids, even if I did, I still believe that you don't NEED anything larger than a Mazda3 or other equivalent 5-door to travel with one or two kids. Pack light.

Toyota Highlander
Well, first on the list was the now-bigger Toyota Highlander. I remember Julia's old Highlander, and thought it was a fine vehicle. Not big, but spacious. I remember it being about the size of a Ford Escape, or other smallish crossover. My, how it has changed in its years. This thing is big. It doesn't feel quite as large as Sandy's Honda Pilot, but it is still a large mass of metal. Large enough now that it has (and needs, but more on that later) a third row, collapsible seat. Ultimately, this car is a bit of a disappointment.

The front seats are flat and minimally supportive. What come behind the front pair of buckets seems so backwards to me that it seems to defy logic. The second row of seats consist of another pair of buckets, while the third row is a bench with room for "three," but to be honest, that row has less room than the back seats of my MINI. It's pathetic. Why, oh why did Toyota put a bench in the back, with two buckets in the middle? Think about this. If you need to put anything in the back of the car, the third row has to go down - there's just no room. That means that if you need to make a grocery run, your behemeth of a Highlander now has as much seating as a run of the mill MINI Cooper. Four people. Moreover, because the third row sits between the rear wheel arches, it realistically could only hold two children. So it's a six-seater instead of a seven, had they put a bench in the center, and two fold-down seats in the back. Poor, poor design. Because of this rather serious shortsightedness, Alice had to drop her #1 contender off the list completely.

The cockpit itself was nice, with run of the mill Toyota soft-touch plastics. The fairly contemporary look to the dash is what you'd expect a soccer mom to endure while driving screaming, snotty children to and from school, church, hospital, theatre class, and anything else they may or may not participate in. Fairly humdrum affair. What a stupid seating layout.

Toyota Venza
The Venza first came up on the radar when Julia mentioned they might be looking at it as a replacement for the Expedition. Now that the 3 has replaced the Expedition, I'm not sure if they still have any plans for it. As crossovers go, it seems pretty good on paper. I can't claim to agree with Toyota's new design cues for the front, which looks like a plate of louvred metal slapped on the front in some sort of TMNT Shredder fascia. Odd, but subjective. For an RX-shaped crossover, the Venza is pretty roomy. There's space to put the front seat all the way back and still be plenty comfortable in back.

The 2.7L 4-cylinder seems to have some good torque to it, considering the not inconsiderable weight of the car. Edmunds claims a 0-60 time of 9.3s, so it's still not meaty by any standard, but it doesn't feel as sluggish as you'd expect from 4 cylinders. The suspension let me down terribly, though. In an effort to make the car more sporty, and more appealing to the modern autophile, all they did was make it far more choppy than you'd want from a crossover. It feels overdamped, so you feel the bumps and dips in the road. It's still ultimately composed, but from the back seat, it just wasn't very smooth. I don't think those honking 18" wheels really did it any favors, either in the ride quality, or aesthetics. Of the group, the Venza returns the best fuel efficiency, with a claimed 29mpg on the highway. Not a terrible car, but hauling kids around with possible ice creams in hand, I'd want a Charmin soft ride to avoid spillage.

The cockpit is awful. Terribly, horribly awful. I'm not sure what plastic refuse dump they found for the dash material, but it's horrid and bad. It's a hard, semi-gloss plastic, with a strange, raked/thatched pattern embedded into it. Bad enough that it takes up a large swath of what you see inside the car, but it continues onto the steering wheel. A sight so awful as to force my hand to my mouth. You may think I'm being hyperbolic, but it is truly horrendous. Putting the Highlander's dash into this car would have made it a tolerable thing to sit in and look at every day. Ugh, thinking about that hollow, hard piece of plastic gives me the jibblies. Still better than the Camaro's interior, but that's like saying a fresh turd is better than one that's slightly sun-dried. Clearly, Toyota was cutting costs there. The center console layout for the instruments do seem a bit easier and more intuitively laid out than the Highlander. The controls seem to make slightly more sense. Both cars LOOK gizmo-laden, and slightly futuristicy, if that's your thing.

Subaru Forester
I recommended the Forester to Alice and Thomas because I knew that it had sort of grown up since I was last in the Subaru scene, both in terms of size and comforts. Hopping into this car after the Toyotas was like saying hello to an old friend. Gone are the futuristic gee-whiz button layouts (see the interior of any modern Saab or Volvo, and you'll see what ridiculous is), gone are the large panels of swoopy plastic replaced instead with a bit of swoopy silver trim that cuts across the dash. It may come off as a bit old-fashioned, but for the sake of useability, being traditional may be a leg up on the competition. The Forester very much feels like the old one, just slightly... bigger.

I forgot how anemic the 2.5L horizontal four was. In terms of acceleration, it feels a bit boggish. It will still eventually move, but it won't be winning any acceleration accolades from anyone, unless they're used to walking. Don't buy this car for its engine; go for one of Subaru's turbo options if you need to get going. I think this feeling is exacerbated by its transmission, which doesn't seem like it's seen a tweak in ages. It still shifts kinda slowly, which really doesn't do the motor any favors. I don't remember the Forester's suspension being pillowy soft, but the new one is just that. It's significantly less harsh than the Venza's, which was a bit of a shock. I knew a couple of Forester owners back in the day, and their cars were fairly sporty, with some dip and dive to them, but I suppose those were modified in some way or another. In any case, the new Forester is soft and comfortable. It still suffers the body roll that plagues all Subarus.

As with all modern Subarus, it comes with All Wheel Drive, which is nice in inclement weather. There's something entertaining about driving down an iced-over MoPac using bald summer tires, and not wiggling in any direction but straight. A niche feature, for sure, in Texas.

Subaru Outback
Finally, there's the Outback, which would be the most car-like option of the lot because, well, it's a car. It looks like a car and quacks like a car. I've never been in a quiet Subaru before, but this thing was creepily silent inside. Mercedes quiet. A bit disconcerting when you look at the badges that litter the interior and exterior of the car. It's also big. Very, very big. The one we tested had Subaru's new fancy CVT transmission, which seemed to put down the power more smoothly (and there was more perceptible power), but because I am vehemently and morally opposed to CVTs, I will still poo-poo it. Who wants an electronic hand brake anyway? Seriously, the handbrake is a button on this car. The suspension definitely feels more car-like, so it feels lower down, even though it sits physically higher up than in the Forester. You feel more like you're sitting in the car, rather than on it.

Of the group, the Outback feels the most grown up. In doing so, Subaru has given it a gizmo-laden interior with more buttons and actuators, and faux-wood trim (if it's real wood, they've done a great job of making it look like high-quality yet still fake veneer).  It feels a bit of a grandpa's car. Nothing wrong with that, necessarily, but it's gone a long way since being a hippie car only to be seen in and around Oregon. Not bad overall, but lacks character.

In the end, Alice and Thomas will have to decide for themselves what car they want, and it may not even be one of these four, but it was good research. Personally, Toyota has been a crashing disappointment in the automotive industry for quite a while now, and after looking over these two from their fleet, will remain down on my list. Japanese manufacturing efficiency is still on display, but their cars just don't want me to buy them. Not that I'm in the market.