So we have 2 cars, both fully paid for:
2007 Mazda3 Hatchback @ 55,000 miles
2007 Mazda CX-7 @ 78,000 miles
The Mazda3 has been my fiance's since she was 16. She learned to drive in it, so it has a considerable number of minor dings and scratches on the outside. It also has a bit of interior damage: scuffs here and there, small cigarette burn on the back seat (flew out front window, flew in back window). The front bumper is also cracked from a small incident she got into, which looks fairly bad. When my daughter's carseat is buckled in the back, I can barely move my seat enough to fit. Driving, I'm so far up my head hits the ceiling and my legs can't move. Passenger, my legs just bang against the dash. When being used by just me, the car is great. It's just as a family vehicle it fails. It's in her and her father's names, but still under her dad's insurance (and he pays it).
The CX-7 was an early wedding gift 5 months ago from her father when my '94 Nissan Sentra finally blew the coup (timing chain blew at 250k miles). The car is in pretty snazzy shape, and fits us well. There actually seems to be too much room, since a lot of the space is vertical and we just don't use it. The car is in both of our names and I pay the insurance on it, at a cost of about $2,400/yr (state minimum is at $1,600/yr, after pricing it at 10+ places).
Now we travel a lot to see family (usually at their expense - so declining to visit them while they offer to foot the bill would be extremely rude), trips ranging from 3 hours to our parents to 11 hours for extended family. The 11 hour trip is to our daughter's great-great-great grandmother's house, and so we try to make that trip as often as possible (not often you can get pictures/memories with that many generations back).
The Mazda3 fits all of our stuff for trips, but the carseat requiring the front seats to be so far forward makes trips uncomfortable. We've tried about 5 carseats (Babies-r-us lets you take them out to fit to your car), and even the slimmest had this problem. Plus, trading in the car for a new one means that the insurance payments will probably bump to me.
The CX-7 gets terrible gas mileage, even after I taught my fiance to drive more economically. As well, the space generally is too much for our trips. Although we can fill the whole thing, now that I've convinced my fiance that she doesn't need to pack 2/3 of her suitcase with shoes, we've had a bit more empty space in the car.
I'd like to get rid of both cars, personally. The Mazda3 is only good when one of us is driving (usually just me), and makes it difficult to sporadically fit the whole family. However it's a 2007 bought-new car with only 55,000 miles on it that's been regularly maintained by the dealership, and due to the cosmetic problems will trade in (or private sell) for much less than it otherwise would. I've thought about taking it to a body shop to price the bumper and dings being taken care of. The difference between the car in the current condition and the car in "good" condition is $5000 (from $7,000 to $12,000). I'd like to trade in the CX-7 due to it's inefficiencies on so many levels (insurance, mpg, parking, etc), but it being a gift and all I'm afraid of pissing off my soon-to-be father-in-law, especially if I trade it in for an older car (he might see it as me trying to pocket the difference rather than trying to get a more effective car).
What would you guys do? I'm in a fairly cushy position, considering I've been given a $12,000 car and in a sense inherited another car worth $7,000-$12,000. I'm also only having to pay one (fairly high) insurance payment rather than two. Should I stick with what I've got, or should I rock the boat and try to trade in for something else?
