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6 Posts
Little background...
I've been driving the family mini-van for the past year, I just turned 17 today and in the past couple days my dad finally has begun talking about buying a car for me. Basically they would pay for it, it would be under their name, but I would be the only one using it, once I graduate I would pay them back for it (Atleast half) and keep it for myself.
The van I do drive is a Toyota Sienna 98... When I first started driving it had roughly 60,000 miles... 9 months later it's at 112,600 something. I play paintball and drive a lot. I've driven more in the time I've had my license/permit than most people have under the age of 21. I like the mini-van to be honest, I don't know a lot about cars... but the Mini-van is relatively "fast" from what I've seen, it has the same V6 3.0 liter that the Camry's have... nothing too amazing... but it works.
My dad showed me the Caliber one day, just all the small things we both liked, the cooler, outlet, mp3 plug-in. Small stuff like that we both wanted in cars for a long time but never saw it up until this.
I like hatchbacks/wagons a lot, I was looking mainly at Subaru's... I used to play rally games and would always pick out the impreza. I started to look at smaller SUV's too but we have never been to thrilled about SUV's. We went on a vacation to Florida last week for spring break, we got to rent an Expedition... I think it was an 05 or 06. What a joke. Cargo space was less than our van, we had to lift the bags up 2.5-3 feet. The acceleration was garbage, we would floor it and it would acceleration slower than anything I've ever seen.
My dad has a Mercedez... E 430 I think? It's one of their biggest sedans, barely fits in the garage. I drive that occasionally because he plays in a Jazz Band and takes the van. V6 or 8 I don't know. I just know it has what I think the Caliber can have which is auto-shift or something. Basically it's an automatic, but you can shift gears. So occasionally I downshift it to like 2nd or 3rd gear and just have some fun with the acceleration/power of the engine. It's pretty crazy. But I don't like driving that car. I'm scared as shit of damaging it and almost wrecked one time I had to drive over to Seattle around 11 at night because he forgot some of his band equipment and was about to play. I'm not a wreckless driver, but something about that car made me forget the rules of the road, or to not pay attention. The mini-van I haven't even gotten close to wrecking it, I drive it like a mini-cooper or something. Flooring it constantly, passing the slow drivers, taking off-ramps/on-ramps at twice the "recommended" speeds. Hey I'm 17... I'm supposed to be a stupid driver
If you've read this far... hah...
Basically I want a car to haul my gear (Paintball) which basically is a massive duffle bag weighing 75-100lbs, and still have room for whatever (Wagons/Hatchbacks).
We originally said around $10,000, but he was looking at the Ford Escape and saw it around 15,000-17,000 and liked it a lot, small SUV, they would still be under warranty and Ford's are cheap to fix. Again, I don't know a lot about cars.
Now I looked at the Caliber again, I never looked at the price before, I assumed it would be out of the question. But now that I look again I guess I'm wrong!
I'll talk to him about it more, but I'm seriously considering the Caliber. Brand new car for a first car would be rediculous, but my dad worked at Microsoft almost since the beginning... He retired when he was around 45... he isn't pinching pennies... I'd be pretty happy about getting an 07 car... in 06... as my first car. I'm just wondering if this will last me 10 years of aggressive driving/low maintaince/decent gas mileage. I don't want to dump a lot of money into, maybe into the sound cause I listen to music a lot, and relatively loud (Oddly enough the Van has the best sound system out of any of our cars... 2000 Nissan Altima, 2003 Mercedez, 04 Toyota Solara). Sad how I like the car that has a $5000 trade-in value over the other 3
Anyways... this was a long first post, but I'm just trying to make the right decision on my first car. I realize I will get biased responses... mainly because it is a caliber forum, but I felt this was the best place to ask questions about this relatively new car.
I've been driving the family mini-van for the past year, I just turned 17 today and in the past couple days my dad finally has begun talking about buying a car for me. Basically they would pay for it, it would be under their name, but I would be the only one using it, once I graduate I would pay them back for it (Atleast half) and keep it for myself.
The van I do drive is a Toyota Sienna 98... When I first started driving it had roughly 60,000 miles... 9 months later it's at 112,600 something. I play paintball and drive a lot. I've driven more in the time I've had my license/permit than most people have under the age of 21. I like the mini-van to be honest, I don't know a lot about cars... but the Mini-van is relatively "fast" from what I've seen, it has the same V6 3.0 liter that the Camry's have... nothing too amazing... but it works.
My dad showed me the Caliber one day, just all the small things we both liked, the cooler, outlet, mp3 plug-in. Small stuff like that we both wanted in cars for a long time but never saw it up until this.
I like hatchbacks/wagons a lot, I was looking mainly at Subaru's... I used to play rally games and would always pick out the impreza. I started to look at smaller SUV's too but we have never been to thrilled about SUV's. We went on a vacation to Florida last week for spring break, we got to rent an Expedition... I think it was an 05 or 06. What a joke. Cargo space was less than our van, we had to lift the bags up 2.5-3 feet. The acceleration was garbage, we would floor it and it would acceleration slower than anything I've ever seen.
My dad has a Mercedez... E 430 I think? It's one of their biggest sedans, barely fits in the garage. I drive that occasionally because he plays in a Jazz Band and takes the van. V6 or 8 I don't know. I just know it has what I think the Caliber can have which is auto-shift or something. Basically it's an automatic, but you can shift gears. So occasionally I downshift it to like 2nd or 3rd gear and just have some fun with the acceleration/power of the engine. It's pretty crazy. But I don't like driving that car. I'm scared as shit of damaging it and almost wrecked one time I had to drive over to Seattle around 11 at night because he forgot some of his band equipment and was about to play. I'm not a wreckless driver, but something about that car made me forget the rules of the road, or to not pay attention. The mini-van I haven't even gotten close to wrecking it, I drive it like a mini-cooper or something. Flooring it constantly, passing the slow drivers, taking off-ramps/on-ramps at twice the "recommended" speeds. Hey I'm 17... I'm supposed to be a stupid driver
If you've read this far... hah...
Basically I want a car to haul my gear (Paintball) which basically is a massive duffle bag weighing 75-100lbs, and still have room for whatever (Wagons/Hatchbacks).
We originally said around $10,000, but he was looking at the Ford Escape and saw it around 15,000-17,000 and liked it a lot, small SUV, they would still be under warranty and Ford's are cheap to fix. Again, I don't know a lot about cars.
Now I looked at the Caliber again, I never looked at the price before, I assumed it would be out of the question. But now that I look again I guess I'm wrong!
I'll talk to him about it more, but I'm seriously considering the Caliber. Brand new car for a first car would be rediculous, but my dad worked at Microsoft almost since the beginning... He retired when he was around 45... he isn't pinching pennies... I'd be pretty happy about getting an 07 car... in 06... as my first car. I'm just wondering if this will last me 10 years of aggressive driving/low maintaince/decent gas mileage. I don't want to dump a lot of money into, maybe into the sound cause I listen to music a lot, and relatively loud (Oddly enough the Van has the best sound system out of any of our cars... 2000 Nissan Altima, 2003 Mercedez, 04 Toyota Solara). Sad how I like the car that has a $5000 trade-in value over the other 3
Anyways... this was a long first post, but I'm just trying to make the right decision on my first car. I realize I will get biased responses... mainly because it is a caliber forum, but I felt this was the best place to ask questions about this relatively new car.