Sitrep: I am married, rather conveniently, to my wife. Between the two of us, we have one kid who turned two last month. My daily driver is an '85 Toyota MR2, and I also have an '85 Jeep J20 for manly truck things; I am keeping both indefinitely. My wife's car is the fambly car, and the subject of this here discussion. It is a tired and uninspired 2003 Toyota Matrix base model with AWD and ~180K miles.
Disclaimer: I'm a cheap son of a so-and-so and not as excitable as I used to be, so I don't buy cars if I don't have to. Hell, I don't even buy car magazines anymore; I'm probably never going to buy a new car, and looking at someone else's stuff just brings me down. But in probably in a year or two, we're going to have to pull the trigger on something. This gives us some time to let used car prices come back down to earth while we think about what to look for and what to avoid.
Let's get the ugly stuff out of the way first. Major gripes with the Matrix include the following:
- It's just not big enough. For a childless couple or the sort of active senior you see on the multivitamin commercials, it's probably adequate, but it's damn near impossible for me to sit in the passenger seat with a child seat behind me, and I'm only 5' 7". The cargo area is just about adequate for a grocery run or a stroller, but not both. There is no margin. We're barely scraping by with one kid. If we manage to produce another youngern, the car is likely to collapse like Elwood's Monaco upon arriving at the Richard J. Daley Center.
- The lack of power is absolutely infuriating. It's dangerously soggy. The engine is the asthmatic 1ZZ-FE, conveniently detuned for the AWD version to all of about 125bhp, and throttle response is strictly theoretical. It's asleep until about 3500 RPM; at 3500, it switches from "asleep" to "woefully inadequate".
- The transmission is a four-speed automatic with ratios so far apart they have to communicate via satellite phone and so tall they barely fit under the hood. The computer is programmed to upshift at every opportunity unless the throttle is set to 75% or better; downshifts do not occur unless at least 90% throttle is employed. I actually have to make sure the floormat is out of the way so that the pedal can be depressed far enough to order a downshift.
- No prizes for calculating the sum of issues two and three. It's misery. Going up a grade with the cruise control set to 60, it'll slow to 55, opening the throttle further and further until it reaches WOT, then downshift to third at about 55 or so and run screaming at WOT until it reaches about 65, and which point it realizes it's in way too deep and releases the throttle fully, upshifting to fourth as I inevitably go sailing past a cop at ten over. Of course, I can shift it myself, which sometimes helps a little, but is a tiresome way to drive an ostensibly automatic family car that still doesn't have the oats to do what you want it to do.
- The car is a base model. Like, not even XR. It has cruise control and ABS and cold A/C, but that's about it. We're not gadget people by any stretch, but power locks and windows would sure be nice.
- The chassis has all the confidence and poise of a washtub full of frogs and dryer lint. The brake pedal has always been soft, and no amount of component replacement, rear brake adjustment, or bleeding can correct it. Steering is numb and springy, as though it is artificially spring-loaded to return to center like some sort of coin-op arcade game. 'Er indoors doesn't care about any of this, but given a say in the matter, I sure do.
- It's generally unpleasant. Seats are uncomfortable to me. Ergonomics are not great. The car is boomy. I've added a little bit of jute padding to door panels and cargo area but it seems to have had little effect.
- Other than reliability, there are no particularly redeeming qualities, no charm, no character. It is a place to sit until we arrive elsewhere.
I have considered slapping a little turbo on it to cure the lack of torque. Ten pounds of boost would absolutely transform the powertrain. However, the fact that I own an old RHB5 and a few little intercoolers and have all the tools to make it happen doesn't mean this is a good idea. And it wouldn't solve any of the other issues.
So there's most of the gripes out of the way. Here are the good points:
- It didn't cost too much when we bought it several years ago and was paid for a long time ago.
- It is, mechanically speaking, a Corolla, meaning that it's exceedingly reliable and not tough to work on. Should something poop the bed, parts are mostly cheap and abundant.
- It has full-time AWD. While we live in western Oregon, where winters are mild, it's been nice to have AWD for the occasional freak snowstorm or trips over the passes to see family.
- It's kind of invisible. Doesn't seem to garner much attention from the kind of people you don't want eyeballing your stuff.
Some qualifications for a potential replacement:
- Correct the gripes listed above.
- Wagons are preferable to minivans; minivans are preferable to SUVs. AWD is nice but certainly not mandatory.
- It has to have an automatic transmission. Although my wife has been taught how to operate a manual transmission, she has no interest in doing so.
- It can't suck to drive. Better dynamics are better.
- Nothing too old, nothing too weird. I want something new enough to be relatively crashworthy, something that doesn't render itself obsolete in ten years, and for which parts and service are relatively widespread.
- No BMW or VAG products.
- Let's assume the budget will be approximately $10K. Less is better. I'm theoretically open to putting work and money into a cheap buy if it raises the value of the car a corresponding amount. Putting $4000 into a $5000 car and ending up with a car worth $11K is great; doing the same and ending up with a car worth $7500 is not.
What else can I tell you? We're near Eugene, Oregon. We don't salt the roads here. Excluding midwest transplants and shoddy collision repair, rust is generally a non-issue.
Eugene is a liberal college town full of liberal college people, so you can't throw a rock without hitting a Subaru. Trust me, I've tried. They're abundant, particularly in Outback guise (not my favorite), but damned if they don't command a premium. If we pull from Bend or Portland areas there is also a fairly good selection of Euro stuff. More on that later.
Whenever possible, I do my own repair work and maintenance. That said, I prefer not to have to. Doing brakes and wheel bearings and engine mounts and water pumps on a reasonable interval is fine. What I don't want is to chase down endless CELs or battle biodegradable wiring harnesses or hunt for some essential component that just doesn't exist anymore, or costs 1/4 as much as the car does. My experience is mostly with Toyota. I still get Toyota parts at wholesale and can source OEM parts for most other makes through friendly connections at dealerships or independant shops with Worldpac accounts.
I've never owned Euro stuff, but have worked on just enough to know that I am not interested in any late-model BMW or VAG products. If this was a toy for me, it'd likely be a W124 wagon, but I'm putting my wife and baby into this thing, and she's not an especially skilled or defensive driver. I want them both reasonably well protected by a reasonable complement of steel and crumple zones and pillows and (reliable) electronics.
Volvo V70s are sort of compelling. The P2 cars are probably getting too long in the tooth to seriously consider. But they sure tick a lot of boxes. I have not looked into the P3 equivalent much at all. Seems the P2 is more abundant here. Mazda6 wagon looks fantastic on the rare occasion I see one. Mazda5 doesn't look terrible and isn't nearly as big as other "mini" vans. I hear they are down on power, but they can't be nearly as bad as that Matrix...
Something tells me we're going to end up with a Sienna and, upon resigning myself to the fact that it drives like a Toyota, wishing I'd bought an Oddyssey. Or maybe buying an Oddyssey and resigning myself to the fact that the transmission just imploded.
Pardon any misspellings or incoherent ramblings. I'm on the whiskey and also typing in the dark so as not to wake the aforementioned toddler.
As far as a reccomendation goes, i'll second a Kia, but try the 2011-2016 Sorrento if you really don't want a minivan. They're not too big, gas mileage isn't the greatest but not awful (averaged mid 20's) and available with AWD. And built like tanks, ours survived multiple rear-end collisions until a Silverado finally took it out on the interstate, again a rear end collision that totalled both vehicles. We drove ours to 120k miles before it met it's demise with just routine maintenance, one set of brake pads and an intake actuator that failed just outside the 100K warranty. Parts were reasonable and readily available via Kia and Hyundai wholesalers.
