- Mar 11, 2013
- 6,904
- Boat Info
- Sara Belle
2005 Weekender 215
- Engines
- Mercruiser 5.0 mpi, Bravo III
Well we pulled the trigger on a new vehicle. While we have a perfectly fine RAV4 XLE Premium, our daughters birthday is coming up and next Fall she is looking at going to UMD (Duluth). Those that have been to a Duluth know how beautiful it is, however Winters can be rough and we’d like her to have an all wheel drive when needed.
We debated keeping it and finding her a used Camry or Corolla (we like the reliability of Toyotas) but as some of you experienced, used car prices are just as ridiculous as new car MSRP pricing. Our RAV, if this was Trumps economy would probably be worth around $15k, which is about borderline what we would spend on her, but the damn thing is up to $20k and we’ve had it for 3.5 years…crazy. So we’re giving it to her so she’s not in debt during and hopefully after college graduation.
We took a risk and ended up buying a Subaru Outback Limited. We were considering the Touring XT with the turbo, which has plenty of power, but I didn’t want to deal with any potential turbo issues. Plus it gets about 2-3 mpg less. I already have an F150 FX4 with the 3.5 ecoboost. The Outback is a nice vehicle. It’s smoother than the RAV and quieter. (We test drove the RAV4 Premium Hybrid) The only thing we’re not crazy about is the infotainment screen and all the nannying safety features. However their 2.5l powertrain seems to be reliable and comes with a factory 10yr/100k mile and the dealership adds another 5yrs and 50k to that. MSRP of course. Also, around here there’s a Subaru stigma of being a hippy or, well, some of you may know. Maybe we’ll put a Blue Lives Matter flag on it instead of a Bernie sticker.
We debated keeping it and finding her a used Camry or Corolla (we like the reliability of Toyotas) but as some of you experienced, used car prices are just as ridiculous as new car MSRP pricing. Our RAV, if this was Trumps economy would probably be worth around $15k, which is about borderline what we would spend on her, but the damn thing is up to $20k and we’ve had it for 3.5 years…crazy. So we’re giving it to her so she’s not in debt during and hopefully after college graduation.
We took a risk and ended up buying a Subaru Outback Limited. We were considering the Touring XT with the turbo, which has plenty of power, but I didn’t want to deal with any potential turbo issues. Plus it gets about 2-3 mpg less. I already have an F150 FX4 with the 3.5 ecoboost. The Outback is a nice vehicle. It’s smoother than the RAV and quieter. (We test drove the RAV4 Premium Hybrid) The only thing we’re not crazy about is the infotainment screen and all the nannying safety features. However their 2.5l powertrain seems to be reliable and comes with a factory 10yr/100k mile and the dealership adds another 5yrs and 50k to that. MSRP of course. Also, around here there’s a Subaru stigma of being a hippy or, well, some of you may know. Maybe we’ll put a Blue Lives Matter flag on it instead of a Bernie sticker.
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