What, me, compulsive?*

My car will soon need about $400-$700 to get its rear brakes up to speed. Since I've been planning to get a new one once I graduated for a while, my dad thinks I should go ahead and look for a new car, instead of put in more money to a 12 year old American car. So I've made a list (and checked it twice) of smallish cars and "cute utes" that I might be interested in, and included gas mileage, total cost of ownership, resale value, total length, turning diameter, rear leg room and safety rankings. Some cars, such as VWs, got scratched from the list due to reliablity issues. Others, such as the Mazda3 and Prius have been scratched for safety issues. There are two safety ranking orgs, the NHTSA and the IIHS. The Prius does well on the NHTSA rankings, but gets a marginal on rear crash tests. Thanks to my family's loose joints (many of us are hypermobile, and we suspect a connective-tissue disorder), whiplash can be particularly problematic for us.

Basically, I'm looking at cars that are 180" long or shorter and have a good turning radius. They need to get better gas mileage than my current car (19/26) or provide me with something else - such as AWD and/ or good storage capacity. I've driven Hondas, Mazdas, Saturns and Toyotas. I'm testing Subarus this week and then I think I'll be done with my first pass.

The salesmen think it's pretty crazy that I'm looking at so many cars, and at such a range, but a) I don't know where I'll be in a year and b) I want what I want! The Honda Civic, Civic Hybrid and CR-V are the current front runners. We'll see how the Subarus do. I think the Civic Hybrid is best for the driving I do now: drive 1-2x/ week, mostly in city, never haul stuff. The Civic EX would give me 25% better mpg than I currently get, and vs the hybrid has a lower base price, better 0-60 by 4 s, has 2 more cu ft trunk and has a 60/40 pass through back seat where the hybrid has none. The CR-V sits up higher, and has 5" more back legroom, AWD and more carrying capacity in general. My dad says I'll know what car I want. We'll see.

I just want this over with so I can stop worrying. Once I decide on something, I'm sure I'll have no trouble mentally justifying it to myself in the future. :)

* My advisor accused me of being compulsive. This came up because he saw I got a new lab notebook (which he likes), and I always get gridded ones "because I'm neat and compulsive." I just like order and being methodical, and having nicely spaced vertical lines in addition to horizontal ones helps with that - and helps me make my geometric doodles more precise. :)