My fiancee and I just moved to Chicago. He's commuting via public transportation and I'm biking to work (woohoo!). We own outright a 2009 Jeep Liberty. He bought it new in 2010 (before we were together). It's not a choice I would have made for several reasons, chiefly the poor reliability of Jeeps and the 17! combined MPG it gets. Now, I figure we'll be driving at most 2-3k miles a year. The only thing we'll be using it for besides (lazy) trips to the grocery store will be going camping & driving home to our parents' town in Ohio. That town is quite far from any major city (2.5 hours), so not having a car isn't really an option to us.
I guess my question is, is it worth our money to trade in the car for something with better gas mileage? I was thinking about a Honda Fit or Toyota Matrix/Pontiac Vibe. However, I'm not comfortable selling a car on Craigslist in a big city like this, so we'd probably just do a dealer trade in or sell it to Carmax. By the time we lose a bit of money doing that, I'm just not so sure that there is a real benefit when we drive it so little anyway. Plus, there's the intrinsic value of having a car that only you have ever driven and therefore knowing all mechanical issues, driving history, etc. Any thoughts?