What Car? "I Know There's No Answer" Edition

What gets MPG like our '16 Mini but has a bunch more cargo room?

Note that the Clubman and Countryman, apart from dragging the MPG down a bit with mass, don't actually have appreciably more cargo room. They seem to give almost all the extra volume to the rear seat passengers; some of that would be welcome, but it's not the central problem. Dog gets the back seats, everything else we want to take goes in the cargo area, rear footwells, glovebox, armrest, clenched in our teeth...

I've got a bunch more thoughts/constraints/etc, but I think it's worth seeing whether anybody has any clever ideas for this simpler version of the question. We certainly could, and possibly should, just keeping driving the Mini 'til... I dunno. Lease return Volvo hybrid wagons? Used Model Ys?

Does it have to be fun? Have a manual? What are we working with other than volume and mpg? 

VW sportswagen? Low to mid 30s on regular gas. Decently fun to drive. Stick is available. Only thing I can think of.

Mazda 5?

Isn't that always the answer when the Miata is not?

Dave M (Forum Supporter) said:

Mazda 5?

Isn't that always the answer when the Miata is not?

Yes

In reply to Jesse Ransom (patron dork) :

Not sure if Model Ys are available used yet, but I wouldn't necessarily discount a Model 3 or S either.

The newest model Rav4 is kind of ridiculous with the mileage/space that it gets. It's rated at 26/35, but for whatever reason my wife has been seeing right around 40mpg in her driving. Lots of that is freeway, but it's still spectacular. And this is calculated over several tanks of gas, so it's real so far. It's huge inside, has features and stuff, and is good at being a tall car/fat wagon. There is a big leap forward in mileage in autos with the newer 6/7/8 speed transmissions and various types of cylinder deactiviation and stop start and such. Modern cars are neat. 

bmw88rider (Forum Supporter) said:

VW sportswagen? Low to mid 30s on regular gas. Decently fun to drive. Stick is available. Only thing I can think of.

That does look like a possibility. There's a number of TDI buyback ones still showing up on dealer lots, and you can get them with a manual if you look hard enough. Unfortunately the TDI wagons all came with a vinyl interior - gas ones had some other options.

Toyota Matrix and Pontiac Vibe may be options too. A Saturn SW2 might pull this off as well, but it sounds like you're looking at newer cars.

It's only reasonable to ask the other constraints, though I was half hoping to ask without providing those just to see what shakes out, since I know I get myself in the same ruts with the way I think about the constraints...

The Rav4 is a prescient pick. My wife has a minor car crush on them ever since we looked at one used way back right before we bought the '12 WRX and all we knew was that we wanted more doors than her Civic coupe. Are you really seeing those kinds of figures on a non-hybrid Rav4? That really is right up there with the Mini...

Lemme see if I can address some of what's above here. Apologies for the sense that I've withheld a lot of really pertinent info. It was just a stab:

• Fun? For variable values of fun. We enjoy the fact that the Mini is pleasant to drive, but let's face it, no modern appliance-car is going to be as much fun as the old and/or modified stuff I have rotating through, and modern cars are getting remarkably good at not sucking to drive. It doesn't need to be "sporty" but I don't want it to hit me over the head with the idea that the enjoyment of driving has been swapped out for my other needs.
• Manual necessary? No, and I think my wife would prefer an auto this go-round. But I really hate the automatics that I hate. I like VW's DSG, I hated the Hyundai Elantra slushy I test drove several years ago, I like the E9x BMW auto fine (but hate whatever they put in the contemporary Minis; ours is manual. I *think* the E9x unit is a good torque converter auto and the Mini is a bad automanual?). I think auto of some variety is most likely, but it's totally case by case.
• The Sportwagen is the perfect car for us, or nearly. We're still waiting for rage equalization between the advent of dieselgate and the miscellaneous bad behaviors of other mfrs to get us back to where we're ready to drive a VW. I know I've said it here before, but we literally were headed to the dealership for a TDI Sportwagen the nearest weekend when it all went sideways. That's the weekend we ordered the Mini instead.
• IIRC the Mazda5 isn't there for MPG, and while we've only driven the earlier body style, it felt... weird. We had it as a rental out of SFO and it just felt like it had crazy rear-end bump-steer or something. Scrub? I mean, I'm sure as a modern, Mazda-built vehicle it didn't actually have any genuine weirdness, but it *felt* like every time you got to the edge of a freeway wheel rut like that side of the car was being jacked up and tossed the other direction. It created a really tiring lateral jostling.
• The Model 3 and Model Y have one common problem, which is that right now, if we do sort of get impatient and rush the car swap, it's not a great time to upgrade that far. We're both doing Big Career Upheaval stuff, and moving nearly-laterally from our 4 year old Mini feels okay, but jumping to a car that costs $40k over what's left of the Mini's value is something we should probably defer 'til we're more settled in. Which honest, isn't so far off that it might not be the real answer. I figure two years from now that's likely to be dandy. So in some ways, I'm being silly and looking for relatively cheap entertainmenst before we take a deep breath and make that leap.

With all that blithering in mind, I think we could move not-far-from-laterally into a slightly newer/lower-mileage Sportwagen without feeling crazy. We've talked a little about whether we're ready to accept that VW is just another giant group which will do whatever it can to make money, and if that occasionally means breaking the law, that's just the way they all play the game. There are no certified humane cars.

I have half a mind to plead for the notion that we give ourselves a 2-3 year vacation from trying to drive the most efficient thing available and just drive a more thoroughly depreciated BMW or Volvo wagon 'til we're ready for a Model 3 or Y. The 3 is much more appealing, the Y nods to fact that a hatch/wagon always wins for carrying random stuff, which is a great trait in the DD.

Weird thing: I keep seeing Grand Caravans around and thinking, in this era of blobby SUVs, that they look like such tidy boxes. Ian F's good words about his help. It'd be great for mountain biking. I love having a changing room that isn't a forestry toilet, but the old Dajiban wasn't much fun driving there. But without something like the Pacifica's plug-in hybrid thing, they're not in the ballpark efficiency-wise.

So, now that I've spilled the beans on all my irrational and unreasonable constraints, what else am I not thinking of? Or how am I thinking of my constraints wrong? Because I'm pretty sure there's an element of that as well.

Another irrelevance due to timing, but I sure wonder what kind of MPGs we'll see form the 1.5L Bronco Sport.

Yes, the numbers are real. I can take a picture of the gas book if you'd like. It's almost new and maybe 4 tanks into ownership. Work from home started again right after she bought it so it's been mostly sitting for the past few weeks. Keep in mind this is the newest RAV4 and part of reason she's getting such good mileage is that it has one of those economy meters on the dash that helps "train" you into becoming a more efficient driver. The Volt had one too and my wife would regularly get 44 miles out of the published 40 mile range. She's good at games. 

The MPG increase will never pay for buying something new over buying something a generation old. My wife bought it because she was ready for a new toaster with wheels, the economy is just a plus. 

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

I was more confirming it wasn't a hybrid than questioning the numbers; I have total faith in both your honesty and your math!

For us, it's much more about voting with the one tiny little lever we have for better efficiency than about whether it will pay for itself. That said, this is a better time for an older-gen purchase, so I'll have to look into just how much of a jump was made in the latest iteration...

How much can be read into the notion that its being apparently happily driven by someone who was dailying a 911 not to long ago? Silly question, apples and oranges, but once you know how something like that drives, I figure it raises your expectations of "okay" as well...

Cheap/fun throwbacks? Scion Xb or matrix XRS (first gen)

Holy Toledo. I've just found that there's a fair local selection of TDIs with DSG and 20k fewer miles than the Mini for about its KBB-private-sale price. It would be older, but it would be more or less the car we probably should've bought when we bought the WRX. Or for another $4k, a 2015 car with 30k fewer miles, in the newer body style.

I'm not going to ask anybody to help us wrestle with our VW issues, but if we have any funny episodes I'll quote them here...

Prius v? 

In reply to Mndsm :

It sure hits the target for a lot of box on a little fuel. I need to remind myself that things improve, and i haven't driven the current generation. I drove an earlier Prius and never wanted to revisit that. Second gen, not first, but the whole virtual-CVT thing they had going on was as awful as the worst automatics in terms of disconnecting the accelerator from reality.

Jesse Ransom (patron dork) said:

In reply to Mndsm :

It sure hits the target for a lot of box on a little fuel. I need to remind myself that things improve, and i haven't driven the current generation. I drove an earlier Prius and never wanted to revisit that. Second gen, not first, but the whole virtual-CVT thing they had going on was as awful as the worst automatics in terms of disconnecting the accelerator from reality.

It really depends on how you frame it. A Prius is absolutely the last thing on this earth that would be anything I would suggest as fun, but if you need space and mpgs.... This is your horse. 

Seriously, a used PriusV seems like the perfect option given your space and MPG requirements.

I’ve driven the 3rd gen Prius, which probably has the same drivetrain. It was weird, but getting that kind of mpgs from a car that fits that much might help me mentally be more into it.

In reply to Mndsm :

It's all grey area, right? If they've improved, it might be okay. If it's as bad as the last one, then it fails the part about not hitting me over the head with the new misery of driving.

How 'bout an Elantra GT or GT n-line?

Jesse Ransom (patron dork) said:

In reply to Mndsm :

It's all grey area, right? If they've improved, it might be okay. If it's as bad as the last one, then it fails the part about not hitting me over the head with the new misery of driving.

I mean I used to hypermile my speed 3 and do all sorts of stupid illegal tailgating semis E36 M3 just to see what kind of mpgs I could get out of it- anything is a game if you're willing to play. 

In reply to Sidewayze :

That's an interesting one... I haven't driven an Elantra in a while; the last time was shortly after they went direct injection and were killing it w/regard to mileage compared to most everybody else. That time they couldn't get us a manual, and the auto was a dozen shades of Buick. I don't actually remember much about the rest of the driving experience.

I wish I didn't need to look individually at so many hatches. A lot of them have a cargo area larger than the Mini, but not by enough. E.g. I'm pretty sure the Impreza/Crosstrek isn't big enough, nor the Golf. I'm guessing the Elantra GT is in the same ballpark, but I should check.

Similarly, it seems like a bunch of the crossovers have a cargo area that's taller than the hatches, but no actual extra floor area, which matters.

In reply to Mndsm :

The Mini has an Eco mode and will show those metrics and... it never captured our attention. Similarly with the Leaf, and that was it's raison d'etre. It seems that our M.O. is to try to buy something efficient and then drive how we drive. I could try harder to get into the gamification of MPG, but I know that it'll never drag my attention off of how the steering, brakes, etc feel. And they don't have to be great, they mostly just have to not be bad.

Outback or Forester? Manual CX-5?

I once tried to get as low MPGs as I could in my dad's Prius V. Got it down to 18 mpg by flooring it everywhere and taking it on the highway.

Anyway, the Prius V doesn't have *that* much cargo room.

What about a PHEV Pacifica? Those are really really nice inside too.

dxman92 said:

Outback or Forester? Manual CX-5?

The Outback and Forester have turned into giant blobs... Which is neither here nor there, I guess, except that they're so disappointing compared to what they used to be when they still looked like wagons. But they also aren't far off the CX-5 which is not quite there for MPG; its freeway mileage is the Mini's around town. Which again, is part of the "I know there's no answer" because I'm asking for a bigger vehicle that hits the numbers of one of the most miserly smaller vehicles. If I haven't already, I want to reiterate that this may be hopeless, and I appreciate all the suggestions because I've become so blinkered. These suggestions at least made me go properly look up the EPA numbers for these three.