Car Thoughts [Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος]

I'm reading comments to my earlier post (and thanks!) but I'm gonna wait until a little later to start composing replies. For now just a couple of observations and a question...

Looking at pictures of hatchbacks -- 3-door -- I realize that I don't really much care for them aesthetically. Given my druthers, I'd normally pick a sedan or a 5-door; with the bass I'd lean more toward the 5-door, be it a longer hatchback or a proper wagon. Although I don't have passengers in the back seat very often, I've gotten used to always having the ability to carry adult rear-seat passengers easily and have them able to enter and exit the car comfortably. Having fewer than four doors will/would be a mental adjustment. More realistically, being able to maneuver guitar cases and assorted other stuff through the rear doors of a sedan is a feature I use regularly. Getting used to always puting such things in through the hatch might make up for that, I dunno.

I might find a 5-door or a large enough sedan to get the bass into more easily than it went into the Honda, but given my price range and the fact that reliability trumps body-style, I'm not counting on that. So I'm trying to prepare mentally for accepting a 3-door instead of being Too Picky and having no wheels for six months.

Anywho ... Google found me a 1986 Merkur XR4Ti that sounds interesting, except that I am utterly unfamiliar with that model. Who can tell me what? Vague subjective impressions considered useful, as are objective observations.

Hey, maybe I'll wind up with a manual transmission again.

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Merkur is a name Ford used briefly on some european designs thay they tried to market in the US. The one person I know who had one couldn't get rid of it fast enough. It was a great car, when it ran.

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I agree with the comment. The Merkur's were very interesting cars and fun to drive. But parts are not cheap and their reliability is not good.

You might think about non-obvious choices that are out of favor, such as older mini-vans, or even full size vans. I suspect that if you actually "ran the numbers" of a $1000 mini-van that gets ~18mpg vs. a smaller $1000 vehicle that gets ~30mpg, the actual difference in fuel costs would be very small. that's why I'm driving a 12 year old mini-van that gets ~19mpg vs. something smaller. To be able to dump 5 or 6 fencing bags of gear in the back (which I do 3 times a week to teach) without stressing, or to haul 2 or 3 students and their gear to a tournament...

Janice

There have already been a great many occasions when I've wished for a minivan (but precious few when I've wished for a full-size van -- yeah, those occasions do occur, but I'm mostly looking at minivan-sized loads or smaller). I wouldn't rule out a minivan outright ... but I haven't seen any advertised for anywhere near my price range. (There is a small chance that I'll wind up with my mother's old one, but we don't know what it'd take to fix it up to run reliably again.)

But the things is, gas mileage does matter, however much I'd like for it not to. Last year I was already thinking about the fact that going to each rehearsal cost me $6 - $8 in gasoline alone (26-28 MPG at last year's prices, one location of HCB rehearsal varying from week to week) and how often I needed a gig to justify on a purely financial level attending rehearsals. And my financial situation is tight enough that I had to really think about that, about how many rehearsals I could afford gas for and how many gallons I can buy at a time, regardless of all the non-economic reasons I have for playing in the bands I'm in.

Taking a small hit on fuel economy (as I expect to) will hurt but probably won't kill me. Dropping gas mileage by a third would be disasterous unless the money is made up elsewhere (lower insurance premiums, finally getting some state assistance with my bills, whatever -- maybe just many more gigs). Ideally, of course, I'd like something that gets better gas mileage than my 1990 Accord, but I'm not going to have the luxury of a lot of options to choose from when I've only got $1,400 to spend.

I'll say this about minivans: when I've borrowed them, I've really, really enjoyed how easy it was to get my gear into and out of them. And that's even when I wasn't carrying any more than fit comfortably in a sedan; just the ease of loading and unloading without the ability to carry more being a factor was significant.

(I've been saying for ... eep! about twenty years, I think! ... that what I really want is two vehicles: one just barely big enough for me and my guitars, sporty, fuel-efficient, easy to park; and one large enough to haul guitars and amps and PA and drums and bass and bandmates. Then I could just drive whichever made the most sense on a given day. I'll settle for one I can get the double bass into and mutter under my breath when fitting drums in at the same time winds up being a challenge, and continue to daydream about having off-street parking and two vehicles, unless by some miracle I do wind up with a wagon or minivan that I can afford to fuel.)

And thanks (to you and

whc) for the heads-up re: the Merkur, BTW.

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Maybe look for a 80's vintage Mercedes 300TD? Should be good for a million miles.

I seem to recall the XR4Ti as something sporty, and probably not big enough to hold the bass. (But I've been surprised before by various cars when the actual items were there to stuff in, and I've never seen/been inside a Merkur.) As for [un]loading stuff, having rear doors might make a lot of difference for you when there's lots of pieces. Reaching from a hatchback can be awkward. If you seldom carry 3 or 4 people, their ease of access to the back seat shouldn't be given too much weight, but you do carry lots of things a lot of the time.
A 1986 would be 5 years older than our car. That's really pushing it. (Just figuratively, I hope.)

2-door doors are bigger than 4-door doors (making a bigger opening, to allow egress behind the front seats), so if you park in tight places a lot they may be more inconvenient.

FWIW, the vehicle I have had that had the most cargo room ever was an early-1980s Chevette hatchback (4-door with cargo hatch); when you flipped the back seats down, it had 6.5' long by 4' wide by 3' high. That's more than I have in my 4-Runner now. I don't know if any old vehicles like that still exist, but you would be able to get a bass into one; I used to carry *upholstered chairs* in mine. Or all my household goods, once upon a time.

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