minivan family
Written by jlz on September 8, 2007 – 9:24 pm -In our preparation to welcome Miss. Arden Zhen, we emptied the remainder of our bank accounts and purchased a new car and car seat.
First, the big car purchase. Before we went for “car shopping,” beeber and I looked each in the eye and decided that “we will NOT buy a minivan!” There’s nothing wrong with the minivan and the folks who drive them, we are just not a “minivan family!” The other requirement we had was that it has to have 3 rows of seats because we will almost always carry 6 people (dAd, beeber, anZel, Arden, grandma Helen, grandpa Sam) in it.
With that in mind, we got some recommendations from our friends. The one that kept coming up was the Mazda5. It’s supposedly not a minivan AND it has 3 rows of seats!!
We checked it out a couple of times and also checked out the Kia Rondo, which is supposedly the equivalent of the Mazda5. The Rondo was actually shorter than the Mazda5 and the two doors were not sliding doors. It didn’t quite work for us as there would be no room at all to put anything once the 3rd row seat is used.
So after much deliberation and negotiation with the Mazda dealership, we broke down and got the Mazda5 Sport with a 6 CD changer. As we were waiting in the dealership to get all the papers signed, I looked down at the tag that was attached to the key and noticed that it said “Body Style: Van”!!!!!! And as we finished signing the paper with the finance lady, she shoke our hands and said, “Congratulations on your new MPV”!!!!! WTF, she thinks the Mazda5 is the new MPV, a freaking miniVAN!!!
I am forever doooomed…we are now a minivan family!
With a new car, it’s time to get a new car seat for Arden as well. We purchased a Britax Marathon from baby catalog before so we checked them out again. They still have the lowest price around, $209 no shipping (to CA) and no tax!!
Posted in Arden, Car Seats, Equipment |
September 10th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
Technically speaking, Mazda5 is called “People Mover” in European markets,”Crossover” in North America and “7-Seaters” in HK. This is a really blurry segment as its based on compact car platform: Mazda5 on Mazda3 platform, Rondo on Magentis platform.