First kid on the way, considering vehiculars

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Unless the need is compelling, there's no need to buy a new car just because you have a baby.

That said: Dodge Caravan. Pentastar. Less than $20k. Kicks behind. Best overall bargain on the road.

PS. Remind your wife that the women driving the caravans are way more attractive than the ones in the BMWs and Subaru's put together. I'm a guy. I notice these things.
 
Nice! You are a practical man....
Originally Posted By: jimbrewer
Unless the need is compelling, there's no need to buy a new car just because you have a baby.

That said: Dodge Caravan. Pentastar. Less than $20k. Kicks behind. Best overall bargain on the road.

PS. Remind your wife that the women driving the caravans are way more attractive than the ones in the BMWs and Subaru's put together. I'm a guy. I notice these things.
 
Originally Posted By: mclasser
As long as you don't get a minivan, you're good.


Unless you have minivan stigma they are the best in terms of space efficiency and utility. The sliding doors make it way easier to load a kid's car seat in tight parking spaces where some knucklehead parks too close to you and you can't open the door far enough to load your kid in your SUV without backing out first.
 
Keep the forester, sell the honda. I would recommend looking for a good used minivan. In most cases you will use the minivan for a good while. It will end up with juice stains, food spills, later for school hauling, muddy soccer stuff etc. No use to spend and eat the depreciation of a brand new vehicle to to this to it! It will be purely a utility vehicle , think of it as such when you look for one.
 
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With just one kid? The Civic coupe can work.

I had an Acura Integra and my wife had a Mitsubishi Eclipse when my son was born.

Her back was the first to give. Loading a baby in and out of the back seat of the Eclipse was terrible for her back. Plus the Eclipse was actually smaller on the inside than the Integra. The Integra is physically a smaller car but the front passenger in the Eclipse had to be jammed against the dash with the rear facing baby seat. No problem in the Integra. We got the PT-GT. No problem for loading and unloading the baby after that.

The 'teg went past 200,000 miles and I got tired of loading the kiddo in and out of his seat when it was 33° and raining. I would get soaked and frozen sitting on the door sill making sure he was secure.

I never had a problem with the Integra that wasn't weather related though. The hatch had plenty of room for stroller. diaper bag, etc... Passenger was not too jammed up against the dash. Civic coupe should be about the same interior wise.

If your back can take it, the coupe will be fine.

Some will tell you that you have to have a large vehicle now. Nonsense. Last summer I transported 3 boys to baseball camp everyday in a small midsize/large compact 5-door. One was a catcher and had all the equipment associated with being a baseball catcher. No problem. Biggest boy. (over 5ft 100+lbs) sat in the front.
 
My wife and I are planning this, too. It's a ways off for us but for various reasons we want to get everything set in advance.

I plan on keeping the RX-8 until it starts to become impractical. At that point, I'll probably be eyeing a used Mazda 5 -- no other way to get a manual transmission in a decent 3-row people-hauler on the US market.

As for the hand wringing about "anything but a minivan"... I can't wrap my head around intentionally buying a worse vehicle (than a minivan) just because of some vague notion of image. That mindset is just completely alien to me and I don't get how people can think that way.
 
We were driving SAAB hatchbacks when Number One Son came along. We stuck with Saab. No big deal, we didn't take out a big "WE HAVE A KID" ad anywhere, my wife didn't get a "see I'm a mommy" haircut and we didn't buy any pathetic "Baby on Board" stickers for the rear windows. When
we replaced the last SAABs we bought Camrys. By that time the child was old enough to have one for himself, so he's a Camry driver as well. JUst because your having a kid, you DON'T need an "SUV", despite what the salesman tells you.
 
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Originally Posted By: mclasser
As long as you don't get a minivan, you're good.



How LIFTED station wagons (SUVs...) somehow became way cooler than BIG station wagons (minivans...) I'll never know.

Kind of like how hatchbacks are cheap econo cars, but a compact SUV is a must have for so many... hint hint.. it's just a tall hatchback...
 
Originally Posted By: geeman789
How LIFTED station wagons (SUVs...) somehow became way cooler than BIG station wagons (minivans...) I'll never know.

Kind of like how hatchbacks are cheap econo cars, but a compact SUV is a must have for so many... hint hint.. it's just a tall hatchback...


Is there really anything a front-drive compact crossover SUV does better than a wagon?

Is the FWD Tiguan really better than a Jetta Sportwagen? Or a 5 door Golf for that matter?

The Forester does have a higher roof, but if you are not stuffing things to the headliner, is it really much more practical than an Outback?

What exactly does a FWD Tucson do that an Elantra Touring does not do?

How much more are you really getting with an Escape over a 5-door Focus?
 
If the Civic coupe ends up being used frequently to haul the family around, maybe swap it out for an Accord sedan. More room, 4 doors, marginally safer. You could probably sell the Civic and get the same model year Accord for just a few thousand more. (Accord or Camry, Fusion, Legacy, Altima, Sonata, etc)

If this were going to be your primary kid hauler, Odyssey's rule! My wife didn't want one but after experiencing the power doors, ease of getting car seats in and out, etc, etc, now (15 years later) we are on our second Odyssey and she will not give it up!
 
You best buy the largest car you can afford. Until you have a child, you really have no clue of all the junk your gonna carry and believe me , you will never have enough room, remember this statement a year from now. Congratulations....
 
BTW I briefly had a 97 merc grand marquis when my kids were 2 months & 2 years. Nothing special, room-wise.

At some point, the parent riding shotgun will feel compelled to climb through to the rear to console an almost-asleep baby. This can be done in a saturn, but way more easily in a van with captains chairs.
wink.gif
 
Originally Posted By: Spazdog
Is there really anything a front-drive compact crossover SUV does better than a wagon?

Is the FWD Tiguan really better than a Jetta Sportwagen? Or a 5 door Golf for that matter?

More ground clearance could possibly help with driving in deep snow. Some people also prefer the higher point of view from behind the wheel.
 
That ground clearance and higher seating position come at the direct expense of... literally everything about how the car operates when it's in motion. That may be a sensible calculus for some people, but no way on earth are those people more than a tiny minority of the people who buy such vehicles in the US. For the majority, what drives the decision is some combination of ignorance (e.g. some vague notion of "better in snow" that people don't know enough to sharpen), insecurity about driving, and concern about image.
 
Wow, what a great response. What should have been a quick trip to Walmart to return a broken kid play-pen turned into a 2-hour debacle, all because we forgot our receipt, they couldn't look it up with all of the information they requested (date, credit card info,) and the price was scanning as $35 cheaper than what we paid.

Anyway, thanks again for all of the response. I'll clarify a few things and respond to some of the posts:

1. Getting rid of the Civic:
I definitely don't plan to get rid of the Civic any time soon, if I can help it, and the Civic CAN haul the baby -- I got around in which ever of my dad's $500 jalopies he had when I was born, and my two brothers and I somehow managed to fit in a Tercel (when it ran.) I have the means my parents didn't to worry about things like crash safety and practicality, so I wanted to gage BITOG for options and experiences.

I also like the Civic, because it's dirt cheap to own, I know everything about it, and it does pretty well in the snow with snow tires, so it will suit me year-round for DD duties, should the Subie be the go-to baby-hauler.

2. Minivans:
After our family grew, my mom bought a minivan. When I first got my license the only car I was allowed to drive by myself was the Windstar. I was just happy that I didn't have to take the bus with all the other Sophomores/Juniors on the days my mom didn't have work and she let my brother and I drive it to school. We were also the first bus stop, so leaving later was an added bonus. I would say that I never minded driving a minivan, but I did borrow gramma's Dodge Neon to take my data to homecoming.

3. The now:
Luckily, my wife being a stay-at-home mom makes the decision a lot easier. If she needs to get away for class, or has any other reason for going somewhere without the baby, she'll probably take the Civic and the baby and I will take the Subie. The need for upgrading the Civic right now or even within the next year or two seems nil to none, I guess.

4. The future:
I've already started looking at minivans, but, by that, I literally mean that I've just been looking; I haven't done any research. I actually like the idea of a minivan, though my wife doesn't. I'm sure she'll come around :p

Anyway, we're not sure how many kids we want to have, so upgrading to a sedan, like an Accord, doesn't make much sense if we plan on a large family. For a large family, the Forester and a minivan or other passenger-shuffling vehicle makes sense. If we decides that one or two is enough, then the Forester and the Civic may suit us indefinitely.

5. A little confession:
I want another sporty car. I'd love to sell the Civic and get another sporty car (previous car was an STI,) but I'm growing up and not having a sporty car is ok with me...mostly

Ok, now I'll read through the rest of this thread. Thanks again, guys and gals!
 
Originally Posted By: d00df00d
That ground clearance and higher seating position come at the direct expense of...

Agreed, but he asked, so I answered.

Another plus is that it's somewhat easier to get kids/car seats in and out of a vehicle that sits higher up.
 
Originally Posted By: eljefino
Research car seats in small cars. The graco "bucket" everyone gets for newborns fits great in the middle rear of most anything. You'll want to access through the passenger flip forward seat of the civic.

But if/when you have two kids, it gets a lot more complex. You'll want the seats outboard so the older kid won't reach/slap the younger. The width of modern car seats is subtantial. Often a glowing parent will drop $350 on a car seat, see it not fit their "X" car, and assume they need a Suburban. They could have simply found a slimmer seat.

Car seats have a shelf life, 3-5 years before the plastic gets brittle, so don't buy a fortress that claims to do everything. It'll be expired/ obsolete before you finish using it. New moms tend to like buying tons of new car seats every six months because of some minor recommended change they read about on facebook. For example they upped the top age for rear facing from 1 to 2 years when my kid was a year and a half.

WHat I would do is get the typical graco bucket, install its quick release base in the forester. It still has slots for the lap belt, try its fit without the base in your civic. You might need a rolled up towel or pool noodle to get it to fit right.

car-seat.org has lots, lots more.

I moved my kids around in the backseats of several saturn s-series... ow, my back.
wink.gif



We've read this as well, which is why my wife isn't looking for any used car seats. We bought a used crib and swing for a steal, but nothing related to safety will be previously owned.

What seems the toughest to figure out, is which features are necessary and which are just an added cost (because we should pay the most for the best for our most loved, right?) In other words, while testing out some strollers, it was obvious which had a little feature here or there that didn't seem like a big deal during a short test, but we could see being a great feature when used every single day. One example that comes to mind, is the stroller that had a handled lever that when pivoted, allowed for the collapse of the stroller for stowing. I don't recall which brand was which, but this intuitive feature blew away at least one other one that I had to work to figure out how to collapse them.

//

RE: CUV's and wagons:

If there was a wagon that we both liked, I'd be all over it. If the Subaru Levorg turns out to be a winner, then I may consider it for my next car...if...

I think you'll have to admit that the Forester CUV is a little more practical than your typical wagon hatchback, though. The room inside doesn't compare to it's shared-frame-sibling, the Impreza. Sure, I may not need the added headroom, but other features make it a very comfortable people mover besides the additional ground clearance
 
Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Originally Posted By: d00df00d
That ground clearance and higher seating position come at the direct expense of...

Agreed, but he asked, so I answered.


The actual difference in ground clearance is:

1.5 inches.

Jetta Sportwagen GROUND CLEARANCE 0ft 5.4in
Tiguan FWD GROUND CLEARANCE 0ft 6.9in
 
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