"Castrada" No Longer

 

After 20 years of driving a minivan, I finally decided awhile ago that the time had finally come. We have one daughter solidly in college and moving into an apartment next summer. With my part time mother-in-law, that meant that we are down to four folks most of the time, and three or five folks on rare occasions. With the older daughter no doubt, likely to need help moving on a fairly frequent basis in the coming years, it put us in an interesting predicament. The minivan was getting up there in age and though while it was a dependable vehicle (with one exception I'll mention soon), it would soon be nearing that point where things will likely start needing attention and as our main trip vehicle, we decided the time to fix that was sooner rather than later.

My only complaint on the minivan were the tires. Due to it being All Wheel Drive (AWD) and the layout of minivans in general, it didn't have a place for a spare and had to have Run Flat tires. These allowed you to drive on them for upwards of 50 miles with absolutely no air in them, hopefully enough distance to get you to someplace with a phone or that sells tires. The drawback was the price and they cost upwards of 2 to 3 times the cost of regular tires. Twice, we prematurely had "rapid deflation events" and due to the stiff nature of the tires, meant they couldn't be repaired and we had to get a new tire. Because AWD vehicles require tires all the same diameter within a small tolerance, one new tire always meant four new tires and that was a very large bill to swallow. On the one or two sets that we actually got full life on, the AWD feature of this particular vehicle was very aggressive on the wear of the tire and their natural lives ended up being about half what I can get out of my other vehicles. All told, I spent nearly 25% of the brand new cost of the vehicle on tires in the decade we have owned it. It still seems to me a shocking amount. It was nearly to the point of needing new tires again which would cost about 20% of the value of the used value as it sits now! 

Another factor was that with hybrid vehicles now fairly common, the one pictured above gets nearly double the gas mileage as our minivan despite being nearly the same size, perhaps 10 inches shorter though quite a bit heavier according to the literature. 

In our rural area and 500 miles in any direction, Toyota Grand Highlanders are in very short supply much less a Hybrid version. Every one gets sold before it arrives in town and dealers maybe only get a few a month allocated. Since we still had a working minivan in good order though in need of tires, we weren't in any hurry so decided to be choosey. Have you noticed that the predominant colors these days are either white, black or some shade of gray with gray being the vast majority of the three? Every brand these days seem to have "nightshade" editions. When we park the gray minivan or my wife's white vehicle in a parking lot, they are always one of dozens the same size, shape and color. I wanted a different color, something that would stand out a bit more and be a bit more colorful to look at. I decided I wanted Blueprint blue which turned out to be a fairly hard to obtain color.

We've been on a waiting list now for several months but finally our number was punched. More accurately, a dealership way down in Kansas City near Donna of Just Me neck of the woods had one in which the person reserving it ended up not completing the deal. My local dealer was able to trade one of their vehicles arriving (a different model altogether) for the one in Kansas City and lined up someone to drive it to Iowa. Upon arrival, it has a tow bar attached, was gassed up and detailed before I hopped into it with 313 miles on it. 

From what little I have driven in it these last three days by the time you read this, I am pleased. 

As my brother who has a way with words said in the days leading up to the purchase, "it will be nice to drive something other than a 'Castrada' for a change."