[quote=paramount]Lot’s to choose from, but I guess I would stick with either a Camry/Accord or Mazda 6.[/quote]
I don’t know…at 6 foot 3 inches, Ricechex’s friend is a long drink of water. Is the headroom and/or legroom good in those models?
I’ve got a 2000 Mazda 626 (forerunner of the 6), and it’s still running strong at 160K miles (and she’s gone through 10 hard East Coast winters, bless her!). I’ve also had a 2004 Camry (V6) and a 2009 Camry (4 cylinder). Loved the 2004: roomy, handled like a dream, and decent gas mileage (around 26 mpg hwy). I was commuting from DC to Philly (240 mi R/T) back then, and it served me well for the 2 years I had her. No problems – just traded her in on something else (more on that later).
The 2009 Camry was NOT a good experience. Principal reason for buying it was to get a nice sedan with decent gas mileage. My 4-cyl Mazda got me 32 to 35 mpg (manual trans), so I figured the Camry would get me reasonably close. WRONG. I was getting no more than 22 mpg hwy, consistently. Turned out to be the most expensive car I ever bought since I felt compelled to trade it in on a Prius six weeks later. Love the Prius, but don’t know if it’s the car for Ricechex’s friend.
Which brings me to my recommendation, which is the car I traded my 2004 Camry V6 for: a Toyota Sienna minivan. Talk about a perfect vehicle! I bought it when I was doing some major redesign and construction projects on my last house, and you can’t believe the range and the amount of stuff I’ve managed to fit into that car. I can fit a max of 7 passengers (they make them big enough for 8), and still have a huge amount of room for luggage and gear. The last row of seats can fold into the floor, and the middle row of seats is removable; once, after I had done that, I loaded 39 bags of mulch (yes, large bags) into the van, and half of the cargo area was still empty. I’m really into antiques (the big primitive-style ones), and there’s never been a piece that I haven’t been able to transport.
But the big surprises were how it handled and its excellent gas mileage. I can tear around winding country roads, narrow mountain tunnels, and corkscrew highway exit ramps in that thing, sometimes at 75 mph, and it just clings to the road; the handling is as good as any car I’ve ever owned (seems to have just the right combination of aerodynamics and weight). And, in its first 4 years, or so, I was getting 27 mpg hwy. Best part? I walked out of the dealer with this brand-new Sienna for $20,400. It’s the CE model (which I’m convinced means “cheap edition”), but it has the same engine as the $43,000 version did, and it has everything I need. And it’s still going strong at 125K miles.
So, Ricechex, I’d recommend that your friend look into one of these jewels. If he goes online and compares the amounts of leg-, shoulder-, and headroom, and the cargo capacity of the Sienna with that of the largest SUVs on the market (Expedition, Yukon, Suburban), he’s likely to find them very close (in some areas, the Sienna may even surpass them). But he’ll be able to get much better gas mileage, and greater driving comfort and handling, at a price in his range. Yes, I’ve had friends who ridiculed me for driving a “soccer mom vehicle”, but I’m a big girl, well able to handle it – especially when they complain about high gas credit card bills.
