The Great Car Debate: Big Bertha vs. the Minivan

Every ten years or so, we reluctantly embark on a search for a new car. We are not car people. I probably didn't have to tell you that if you've seen our vehicles, such as they are.  This is a strange change from my childhood, when my dad collected every luxury car known to man, built by hand a Porsche speedster like the one in Top Gun, taught me to drive a stick on a Ferrari Testarossa, and generously bought a beautiful peach '59 T-Bird hardtop convertible that he quickly realized would NOT be a good airbag-less first car for the hesitant, stop-and-start new driver in the family.

I digress.

In this season of life, as adults with lots of messy people in our lives, we have come to value functionality and reliability over any single other factor, with cleanliness admittedly ranking outside of the top ten on our priority list. (Don't think poorly of me. Whiny kids with low blood sugar are enough for me to sling snacks from the driver's seat like I'm Little Debbie herself.)  And as both our cars approach 200,000 miles, the Great Car Debate is heating up like never before.

The in-car vac is the best thing the Odyssey has going for it. I'm still dubious if it could handle the substantial Whataburger cream gravy spill of last week.  However, if my hair could look like this while the messes are suctioned, I might reconsider you, Honda.

Hey, I'll have kids out of the house by the time I get rid of this vehicle. This is a decade-long commitment....longer than some people stay married. Time to shift the persuasive conversation in to overdrive.

Madeleine is on my side in this debate.  In fact, all the kids are. We unanimously favor a car where NO ONE CAN TOUCH EACH OTHER.  Does such a thing exist?  Well, yessir, it most certainly does--in the form of the GMC Yukon XL.  Any larger and you're driving a school bus, folks.  We rented one on a recent trip to Texas, and when the unsuspecting Enterprise rep brought it around front, I ran over, patted her on the hood, gave her an enthusiastic half-hug and lovingly dubbed her Big Bertha.  The rep thought I was a titch crazy, but that car was a little bit of heaven, I tell you.  A rolling living room with La-Z-Boys for everyone.  How can the debate not end here?

Answer: because David is on the opposite side of this argument, and he is formidable in his stubborn stance.  With a rallying cry for the Honda Odyssey, he sees gas efficiency above all else.  To complicate matters, after years of stock-picking, he's also anti-American when it comes to the Big Three automakers.  He might not call himself a car person, but he knows a bunch of indisputable statistics about manufacturers, operations, union labor, and parts suppliers that, when brought up, make my eyes glaze over and my mind wander to what's for dinner.

Come to mama.

For me, the debate's simple: it's all about my sanity.

Madeleine has taken the discussion to a new level with the injection of democracy into our mini-dictatorship.  I recently passed the family bulletin board and discovered this strategically-placed document:

So, my current hope is that if I lose the battle, there's a slim chance that, when she litigates her first case, Madeleine could buy me the 2025 Yukon XL to replace my dilapidated 2015 Odyssey minivan with the broken in-car vac?  Hey, even Little Debbie's gotta dream.