Mini-van?

4 thoughts on “Mini-van?”

• Sander

  7/7/2008 at 3:28 pm

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  Do it!
  Vans are great for all those reasons, most of all being able to cart big stuff around. Also, you could paint some sort of Transformers vs. Dinosaurs battle scene mural on the side.

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• Ryan Schenk

  7/7/2008 at 4:10 pm

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  I agree, take it!

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• Irene

  7/7/2008 at 4:28 pm

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  Definitely take it! Some of your cons shouldn’t really be serious concerns. Example: poor gas mileage. It’s already clear the van will be used on a need basis, not as your regular vehicle. Plus, the 40.6 mpg you’re currently getting with the Nissan more than makes up for the van’s guzzling.

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• Jon Abad

  7/7/2008 at 9:27 pm

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  Oh, obviously you don’t remember the Car Talk puzzler from 11-05-2007: Can a beat-up Plymouth Voyager get as good gas mileage as a new Prius?

  The MPG Smackdown: The Clunker vs. the Hybrid
  This was sent in recently by a fellow named John Canoose.

  My friend Joe lives a few blocks from me. He’s a regular working stiff, just like me, though we work at different places, Now, Joe, he likes to do the right thing — as he sees it — so he recently bought himself a brand-new Prius.

  Joe says, “Wow, it gets great gas mileage, almost 50 mpg around town and about 40 on the highway, even with 5 people in it — you know 4 passengers and the driver. That’s pretty good.”

  Anyway, Joe’s grandmother for years drove a beat up old Plymouth Voyager. He used to tease her about it getting maybe just a little more than 15 mpg around town. Of course, it did a lot better on the highway with that 5-speed manual transmission and 4-cylinder engine.

  Grandma claims she would get something like 28 mpg maybe a little more on the highway. Pretty good. But Joe hated that thing; it was underpowered and it was ugly.

  So when Grandma died, you guessed it, she willed the Voyager to him. It sat in Joe’s driveway for a couple of weeks while he advertised it for sale in the paper. But as you would expect, no takers.

  I went on a vacation at about this time. Returning from Sand-in-Your-Shorts-Beach in Florida, I drove by his house on the way home and there was the Voyager in his driveway, but it looked like it had been driven.

  Joe was home, so I stopped in. “What’s up?” I asked. “Decide to keep that nifty Voyager?”

  Joe says, “Well, yeah. You know I realized that I could get as good mileage as the Prius if I didn’t drive it all the time.”

  So, is Joe flipped out or is there something going on here?

  Click on when you think you know the answer!

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