The wife and I are trying to decide if we should try to switch our single vehicle from a 2007 Kia Sedona LX (V6 engine) to a smaller car. The minivan has 66k miles on it. Kelly Blue Book has it as about $5k dealer trade in, $7k private sale.
We have two children in car seats (age 3 and 1.5) and two dogs (average weight about 60lbs). About twice a year we drive 500 miles from our home in visit family (dogs included). The wife is home with the kids (and 10 months per year bikes most places with them) and I bike to work. Our yearly driving has averaged 10k/year. Our town is about 5 miles end to end, so most trips are well under that.
We primarily like the Kia for the space. It fits 6' 4" me, the wife, the kids, the dogs, and stuff, with room to spare, on our trips to see family. But, we agree that we could give this space up 99% of the time if we could figure out a roof rack or pull behind for the infrequent trips.
We are concerned about the long term maintenance costs of the Kia. Except for some rotors that we let go to long (we checked them, they looked ok, but a few months later needed to be replaced), the cars has been low maintenance so far. Nevertheless, we think this may be a good time to look for a vehicle with better long term prospects. Kia offers a fairly generous warranty (at least on paper), but I'd rather have something that lasts. In particular, I see automatic transmissions as ticking time-bombs and would prefer to find an automatic (plus manuals are 98384% more fun to drive).
One way to justify the switch would be on gas mileage. According Fuely.com, our model gets about 19mpg. There is significant room for improvement here. Our driving situation would be extremely well suited to a hybrid (or plugin!), but I can't imagine that is overall cost effective at this point.
I calculate the payoff in distance to trade to a new car with X miles per gallon rating would be: d = (19 * mpg * c) / (p * (mpg - 19), where c is amount we would pay for the new auto and p is the price of gas. For example, if gas is $3.50/gallon, the new car got 33 mpg and we paid $2000 out of pocket for it, we would be ahead on costs after 25,591 miles (or given our driving habits, 2.5 years).
It's not a clear choice one way or the other for us. I'd be interested for some opinions.
