Let me preface this by saying, that I'm fairly sure I know any feedback I get will be for option a). But I will post anyway and you can laugh at my naïve question of car vs suv. I will also say that used cars in Canada seem weirdly expensive. People are still asking 18,000$ for a 5 year old vehicle with 175,000km on it.
We are in the market for a new 2nd vehicle as our 12-year-old domestic brand, heavy as a tank mini van is facing imminent collapse at the tender age of 180km. We got it for 7K 9 years ago, plus a couple grand worth of updates over the years. Not heavily invested in it and don't want to be. Which means dump it before that transmission goes.
Our other vehicle is a sporty little 2009 Toyota corolla. Nothing owing on it. We will drive it into the ground and/or hand it over to the kids when they start driving.
Yes, we "need" 2 cars, we go to work and come home at different times, he starts early, I get the kids off to school, he gets home early and drives the kids to their activities. We live 15km outside of town, mostly highway driving, 15 minute commute into town. Yes I could bike, but I haven't wrapped my head around riding on a highway yet.
We have 2 kids, which means we don't need a minivan. My DH lusts after Toyota Tacomas, but he's letting it go, and bought a fancy trailer instead to haul stuff with. By stuff I mean reno materials, garden stuff, firewood etc. Currently we can haul stuff with the van, we don't have a trailer hitch on the corolla, and I don't know that we could pull a trailer full of horse poop for the garden on that car although I know there are some pretty kick ass people who haul lots of stuff with their corollas.
So now we are starting to look. We are sticking with Toyotas, cause we like them. I have found option a) a 2010 Toyota Matrix, 65000km on it, asking for 10,000$. It has a hatchback which is on my want list, because we have 2 smaller dogs that travel with us sometimes, and we can't put then in a trunk, so they end up hopping all over the corolla when we take that. Hatchback = dog cage. Towing capabilities are the same as the corolla and also doesn't have tow hitch. We could buy this for cash now...it would wipe out all our cash, emergency fund included, but we'd start that up again.
Option b) is a shiny 2007 Toyota Rav 4 with 65,000km asking 16,999$ possible trade it for our crappy van. And could maybe get them down to 15K since it's been on the lot for almost a month. I was pretty excited to find this with so low km, but then did some research and found lots of people saying low km on an older vehicle is great, IF you get an awesome deal (which this isn't), and there are cons for low mileage. The benefits of this, are towing (doesn't have a tow package, but could install one). Also has roof racks, matrix doesn't and our corolla doesn't. Lots of room in the back. Has 4wd for those once every 3 years when we get some snow and my husband needs to get out of the driveway for work. So we'd be in the hole for maybe around 4K depending on trade in and price. But obviously we'd have worse mileage, an older vehicle etc.
The matrix is blue and the rav 4 is red, obviously important in the decision process.
Matrix...right?
