Sedan, Van, and Miata, What More Could You Want? Members’ Rides

Hey there, Happy New Year! It’s been a while since my last Members’ Rides post, but I’m back and ready to go for the new year! For my first post of the year, I had to return to an old favorite and find a Miata to talk about. To that end, meet Bill, aka Highland Green Miata. Bill is a freelance CRM marketing guru out in Indiana, and he’s got excellent taste in cars. 

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How did you get into cars?

For me, cars become part of our collective experiences. Some of my best (or at least strongest) memories are with cars that weren’t mine, but became part of my life, if only temporarily. These cars have become part of, let’s say, not my Dream Garage, but my Memory Garage.

Some highlights are when I was able to drive a Westfalia VW bus from Amsterdam to the Alps in Switzerland and back. Getting a flat tire in a Skoda Octavia in the pouring rain in Ireland, where a local helped me change it. Renting a VW Arteon in Germany that had a sticker on the window warning that it had snow tires on it and not to exceed 250 kmph (155 mph). Then there was a you-drive-yourself convoy tour of Berlin in vintage Trabants. My wife and son’s first time driving in Europe, and it was in a vintage manual Trabi!

I’d also like to make a callout to my son-in-law’s garage, specifically his self-fabricated “Wile E. Coyote Acme-Fold-Out-Anvil” custom bumper on his F150. This setup might discourage tailgating, but the reason for this is that he’s a farrier (a person who shoes horses), and he has the anvil and a portable forge in his truck so he can fabricate custom horseshoes on site.

Since the very beginning, I’ve been a big fan of the Autopian and love not just the content but the fantastic community that has developed around a shared love of cars. I’ve always appreciated cars more for the aesthetic aspects than the engineering or performance, although I can respect both. I am not a wrencher; honestly, for me it’s about the drive as much as the car. As long as I can toss the car around a bit on a fun road, I’m happy.

What’s currently in the garage?

• 2018 VW Passat – I am a defender of the mid-sized sedan to my second-to-last dying breath
• 2024 Honda Odyssey – I am a defender of the minivan to my dying breath
• 2008 Mazda Miata – Needs no defense

How long have you had the Passat?

This is the closest thing to an impulse car purchase we’ve ever made. We had an Altima that we were intending to “eventually” hand off to my son, but we weren’t really shopping for ourselves at the time. We had gone into the VW dealer over Thanksgiving 2019 to buy a used Jetta for my daughter, who was home from college. This new Passat was sitting in the middle of the showroom floor. We took a different one for a test drive and ended up buying two cars that day. The Passat for us, and a Jetta for my daughter.

What made you pick this out of all the options around?

The first thing, as I said before, is we weren’t really shopping for ourselves at the time. But I loathe the whole car-buying process, and we had just gone through a carousel of horrible dealer shopping visits with this daughter, and her older sister just six months prior.

The worst was that my older daughter was close to tears because they just kept dragging out the test drive process to absurd lengths. We were at the dealer for over two hours, and she was only able to test two cars. I knew the Altima’s time was coming, and I didn’t want another one. Really, it was a good enough car, and the timing was good. The fact that it was toward the end of the model year, and the month, and it was discounted $6000 under sticker didn’t hurt either. Another thing that appealed to me was no CVT, since the Altima’s had failed after 50,000 miles.

How is it?

We love driving it. It’s comfortable. It handles well. It’s had a few issues with the infotainment and cooling system. All of which have been covered under warranty, but that’s now up, so we’ll see. It got the 2.0 turbo, which likes to help itself to a nip of the oil more than it should, so you’ve got to watch the oil level.

Why is the midsized sedan something worth defending so fervently?

First of all, my wife and I both hate SUVs. So part of my defense of the mid-size sedan is that it’s the anti-SUV. They get better gas mileage, and the Passat is astonishingly good; it’s rated 36 highway and in its six years of life it’s averaged 38 mpg, and I am not light on the pedal either. If my aging bladder could take it, I could drive 500 miles to my mom’s house in North Carolina on a full tank without stopping.

The other thing is that in most cases, there’s not much more “utility” in an SUV than a car with a decent-sized trunk. I fit a full-size bike in the trunk of the Passat on that trip to NC. It fit just fine, didn’t even have to put the seats down.

Any fun memories from your time with this one?

This is one of the last remaining original pavement stretches of Route 66 (not actually a road anymore). My son and my wife took a Route 66 road trip during the spring break his senior year of High School in March of 2021, when COVID was still in full swing. They drove from Illinois into Oklahoma and turned back.

That led to a trip in March the following year, when he and I flew to Arizona and drove the entire Arizona stretch of Route 66. I rented a convertible Mustang for that one. We stayed in the concrete teepees hotel in Holbrook, Arizona, stood on the corner in Winslow, Arizona, and drove through the car selfie station in Kingman. Epic road trip.

What’s the best thing about this car?

I love that it is an actual color (Fontana Red, the touch-up paint, the name is in German, so it’s “Fontana Rot,” which I think is hilarious), and the interior is a light color (Cornsilk Beige), which is so difficult to find these days. I feel that a light-colored car interior has an impact on your mood. Who wants to sit inside a black shroud for hours on end? It’s also kind of silly, but I love that it has cornering lights. You almost never see those on anything.

Now tell me about your Odyssey!

We bought this one new in 2024, so it’s still in the honeymoon period. This is our fifth minivan and our second Odyssey. We had three Chryslers, a second, third, and fourth gen, before we jumped to Honda. The Chrysler products just got worse and worse with each succeeding generation. I bet the second-gen 1994 Voyager we had is still knocking around northern Wisconsin somewhere. Meanwhile, the fourth-gen Town & Country developed that awful body rust just ahead of the rear wheels like all of them did, like some kind of automotive venereal disease. Even though I think Stow and Go seats are one of the best automotive innovations ever, I just couldn’t do another Chrysler. The Hondas have been fantastic.

What made you pick the Odyssey over anything else?

My only serious cross-shopping was with the Sienna. I’d rented one a year earlier for a long-distance road trip and was really impressed with the fuel economy, but was really underwhelmed by the interior. There were two things that ultimately disqualified the Sienna for me. The first is that the second row of seats doesn’t come out. The number of times every year that I remove that second row is considerable. The second one, and it seems dumb, but it’s that you couldn’t get a 12V outlet in the cargo area unless it was the top trim level, which we really don’t need. A plug-in cooler in the cargo area for trips to the cottage is a must.

What is the best thing about having a minivan?

It does most everything well. It’s comfortable. It tows up to 3500 pounds. It swallows an amazing amount of stuff, and the load is covered. It’s amazing how much stuff you can fit inside one with the seats out. During COVID, I drove a ton of stuff including a couch down to Nashville in the pouring rain for my daughter’s dorm, and then she decided she didn’t need it, so I just drove it back.

What about the best thing about this specific one?

Just as with the prior generation, it drives and handles far better than it has a right to. The V6 and the 10-speed with the paddle shifters make it a bit of a stealth rocket. It handles rock steady at 100mph. Allegedly … I also appreciate that Honda sells wetsuit-style seat covers for the seats that fit completely around them, so the dog doesn’t mess up the leather.

Anything you would like to change on it?

The tradeoff for this generation was that they put the spare tire in the floor between the second and third row. In the prior generation, it was along the wall in the cargo area, and that second row had a covered cubby. I liked that cubby, and the spare was a lot easier to get to. They have definitely cheapened up some of the interior materials versus the prior generation. I don’t love the digital dash’s graphics (one model year later, they updated it and it’s now better).

Do you think Honda is wrong to not offer a hybrid option, or do you think the V6 ICE is better? 

Personally, I love the V6 in the Odyssey. The highway fuel economy is 30mpg if you baby it, which isn’t that bad for such a large vehicle. This is another thing where I ran the numbers between the “Toyota premium” on the Sienna (particularly if I had to swallow the highest trim level just to get a plug in the cargo area), and the payback period for the better fuel economy was something like six to eight years.

We could also get away with one of Honda’s lower trim levels because I didn’t need rear seat entertainment or USB ports for the dog, so the Honda was just a better value for what we actually needed. I imagine if Honda could have easily built a hybrid Odyssey, they would have already. After I bought this one, I got an extensive survey from Hond,a and you could kind of tell they were fishing around for what kind of compromises would be acceptable if they were to offer a hybrid– one of the questions had to do with getting rid of the spare tire altogether, which got a big no vote from me.

You said there’s a good story behind the Miata, let’s hear it.

This was the summer of 2018. My wife and I were on a “date afternoon” at TopGolf, and on a whi,m we decided to go look at Miatas. No real intention of buying anything, just “let’s test drive a convertible for fun.” We actually stopped by the Fiat/Alfa dealer on the way to look at the 124 “Fiata” which my wife immediately pronounced “ugly,” so we moved on.

Went to the Mazda dealer and took out a new RF for a spin. Liked it well enough, but again, we weren’t really that serious about buying a brand new $30K+ convertible in the Midwest as a weekend-only car. Again, a horrible dealership experience. When we brought the RF back, I had to literally go hunting around the dealership to find someone to hand the keys back to.

Walked out to the lot and there, parked next to the one we just brought back, was a woman with a 2008 Highland Green over Saddle Brown NC1 generation Miata. She’d brought it to the dealership to see if they were interested in buying it from her. They’d just given her a terrible lowball offer, and she’d noticed us returning the test drive car, and just walked up and asked us, “Are you interested in a used one?” We told her we were just test driving on a whim, but why don’t we take your number in case we change our mind.

Well, they say that if you shop for a car, you tend to end up buying a car, and two days later, we met up with the lady, took the ’08 for a test drive (turned over 18,000 miles on the test), and came to an agreement for a third of the price of new. And we’ve never regretted it for a moment.

Will it be in your garage forever, or what’s the plan?

We hope to be its forever home. It’s only up to about 24,000 miles. It’s always been a seasonal car for us, and it’s taking a long winter’s nap in a storage unit at the moment.

How do you like the NC compared to the other generations?

Other than the test drive of the 4th generation, I haven’t driven any others. This one is a Grand Touring with every option, so it has a six-speed manual, sport shocks, LSD, and stability control (which you can turn off).

For those in the know, “miyachta” refers to the fact that the third generation ones are the largest and heaviest, although to me it’s a bit of splitting hairs if you’re not tracking it. For someone like me who’s six feet tall, I need the extra space. The trunk is also far larger than the current generation. The NC generation also has by far the best power retractable hardtop (PRHT) solution, where they somehow managed to get a retractable hardtop into the space that the soft top normally occupies. The current RF looks good, but isn’t the pure convertible that the PHRT is.

What is the best thing about this?

It’s a manual! Long live manual sports cars!

What’s your least favorite?

That we live in the Midwest and have to put it away in the winter.

Is this a weekend cruiser, or how does this typically get used for you?

I work from home, so I hardly drive on a daily basis as it is. This is a going to the farmer’s market, taking a drive on the weekend, going out for the evening kind of car. When we got it, it had already been a garage queen that was never driven in the winter and rarely even in the rain, so it kind of feels like abuse if we were to change the life to which it’s accustomed.

Thanks Bill!

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