The new Looney Bin Mobile

A few posts back I mentioned our ongoing discussion about the next car purchase for our family: would it be an SUV or minivan? Well, after much discussion we finally ended up deciding on the minivan and added our new Honda Odyssey as the official Looney Bin Mobile last night. Unfortunately, the trusty 2-door Civic I've had since college was retired (traded) in place of the Odyssey. I'll miss the road trip memories in that car (like putting 1000 miles on it storm chasing out in the boonies of Oklahoma in less than 24 hours), but Bob is happy now that he gets to drive the Accord to work.

So for those of you who may be facing a similar decision in the future, this is how we decided the minivan was the best fit for our situation:

1)Comfortable 3rd row seating-Once we decided this was an important factor for us, everything else seemed to fall into place pretty quickly. We debated for a long time how much we would use the 3rd row with just the three of us, but figured between future children and my parents and sister living here in the area that it would get quite a bit of use. Plus it would be nice for carpooling to various places like the zoo or Children's museum with friends or when my in-laws come in from Virginia. This decision told us we were either going to look at a minivan or larger SUV (as opposed to something smaller like a Ford Escape).

2)Price-Knowing that we were going to go with a minivan or larger SUV, we started shopping price. Without getting into too many specifics, in general we found that the minivans tended to run cheaper than the larger SUV's (Pilots, Tahoes, Suburbans, etc), unless you're buying the Touring trim level on the Odyssey. Actually, the Pilot was quite comparable to the Odyssey at the dealership we bought from in price, we just thought the 3rd row seat in the Pilot was a little too tight to use comfortably for long periods. Otherwise, we might have come home with a Pilot!

3)Reasonable gas mileage-Notice I said "reasonable" here: If you want Prius-level miles per gallon, then buy a Prius. Again, generally speaking, we found the minivans tended to have better gas mileage, especially compared to the large SUV's. The Odyssey EX gets right around 17/23 (The EXL trim level is a little better at 18/25).

4)Extras-I loved, loved, loved the built in window screens on the Odyssey! No more of those frustrating suction cup shades that Jack would pull down day after day. And these shades are nice and wide, filling almost the entire window. Also, we found the van to have plenty of storage compartments, easily maneuverable and collapsable seats, and cupholders gallore! And lastly, we don't have a lot of room in the garage, so having doors that pull back instead of pushing outward makes it easier to get Jack in and out of the car.

The downside is that yes, it's a minivan, or as I've had several friends tell me, a moo-moo van. It's not the coolest car on the block, though I do think Honda has made some nice strides in at least making the Odyssey look a little less like an egg. The pluses for us though outweighed the coolness factor, and the ride is nice and smooth. I'm looking forward to some future Looney Bin road trips in this car!