OK, that was weird -- my reply to your *next* post & your reply to my comment just crossed in the ether. About a second after I hit Send, the notification for your comment arrived.
We ended up with a Ford Fusion hybrid. It's bigger than I'm used to or wanted, but somehow it handles amazingly like my sport model Protege. It was also a good bit more than we planned to spend, but it's extremely well designed & gets terrific reviews from every source we could find. Nothing else we tried, hybrid or standard, impressed us anywhere near as much. As Steve put it, "Full-size car deluxe feature set, small car handling, & hybrid MPG."
We liked the Prius, but the amount of covered cargo space (as opposed to the hatchback & folding seats) was way too small. I also really hated the visibility. (The new Prius wagon is coming in October at the earliest.) The Fusion's trunk is very small for a car that size, but only just big enough.
I noticed that all the manufacturers load up the hybrids with standard features that cost extra on regular models -- probably trying to sell more of them in order to meet the federal fleet MPG mandates. If we had bought a regular Fusion plus every option that interested us, the price difference between it & a hybrid would only have been around $1000.
We think the old Protege's gremlin finally moved into a critical system, most likely an oil pump sensor. It was inspected just recently & pronounced to be in good health, but the space of 15 miles it went from perfectly fine to sitting on the beltway with the engine totally seized. RIP.
We ended up with a Ford Fusion hybrid. It's bigger than I'm used to or wanted, but somehow it handles amazingly like my sport model Protege. It was also a good bit more than we planned to spend, but it's extremely well designed & gets terrific reviews from every source we could find. Nothing else we tried, hybrid or standard, impressed us anywhere near as much. As Steve put it, "Full-size car deluxe feature set, small car handling, & hybrid MPG."
We liked the Prius, but the amount of covered cargo space (as opposed to the hatchback & folding seats) was way too small. I also really hated the visibility. (The new Prius wagon is coming in October at the earliest.) The Fusion's trunk is very small for a car that size, but only just big enough.
I noticed that all the manufacturers load up the hybrids with standard features that cost extra on regular models -- probably trying to sell more of them in order to meet the federal fleet MPG mandates. If we had bought a regular Fusion plus every option that interested us, the price difference between it & a hybrid would only have been around $1000.
We think the old Protege's gremlin finally moved into a critical system, most likely an oil pump sensor. It was inspected just recently & pronounced to be in good health, but the space of 15 miles it went from perfectly fine to sitting on the beltway with the engine totally seized. RIP.
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