Powerful, Roomy, good mileage
First off I want to say this car is a joy to drive. Plenty of power combined with decent fuel economy, yet still lots of legroom, a huge trunk, and a rear seat that folds down making the trunk space expand all the way to the front seats. This car is perfect for quietly floating down the summer freeway on my leather seats with the flawless AC and good road trip tunes on the eight Bose speaker system. I added a hitch and trailer light plug to it and it is a very comfortable road camping/hotel hopping rig. Launching a small boat can be done fairly easily due to the front wheel drive. Commuting to work is pleasant as well with the heated seats and well laid out controls.Steering responsiveness is good for the size of the beast while acceleration can be exhilarating especially if you turn off the traction control and AC. It isn't a sports car mind you with the super smooth automatic transmission but there is no fear passing slower traffic on an uphill pull in the mountain state I live in either.
Now the rest of the story.
My car has been fairly reliable. It had 70,000 miles on it when I bought it from a dealership three years ago and now has 120,000 miles.
Some dealership tricks to watch for are that new brake pads and rotors were needed soon due to the rotors being previously scored but rather than replace them new pads were put on as a temporary fix. The electronic warranty I foolishly bought did not cover very little and nothing that I needed covered.
New tires were immediately needed. But that was easy to see.
I've had the water pump replaced for leaking. There are some nagging electronic issues with the car that have added up to negative and insecure feelings about safe performance of the car. Heat/AC blower vent selection is computer/electronic for no good cause and has intermittent malfunction. This problem seems most persistent in cold weather when I need defrost. Rear defrost is not working now. I have gone through several headlights in the three years I've owned it. From time to time the car has locked me out until I opened the door with the key at which time it wouldn't start and honked the horn alarm until I open the hood and disconnected the battery. The electronically controlled Stabilitrac system has never been useful in slippery conditions and is unnerving when accelerating uphill as it will cause a yawing back and forth action that can pull the car into a front end fish tail. Strange and disconcerting to downright dangerous is made more annoying by the system being automatically defaulted to on every time I turn the car off.
I was surprised at how poor it's winter driving is considering it's front wheel drive with the weight of the tranny and engine right on top of the power wheels. That daily driver problem is compounded with the low profile 18" wheels needing very expensive tires and the only other alternative is traction socks because cables won't fit in the wheel well space. The socks do work well but are comparatively expensive, require a 25 mph. speed, and will wear out very quickly if driven on dry pavement at all (ie. no patchy ice covered/bare road driving).
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