By Susan Davis

Our 8 year old LEXUS RX, which I think is great, has 100,000 miles on it. Now that we’ve moved to the country, on top of a mountain, and it’s our only car, it’s decision time. Do we keep this one until it drops – we’re told it could go to 200,000 miles!! – or get a new one?

This is the second RX we’ve had… the first for 7 years, this one for 8, so our first stop was looking at the new ones. Nice car. A few issues. One: there is no Lexus dealer within an hour of our home in NW Ct. Two: the new ones get the same so so mileage as ours, about 21mpg overall. (You’d think in 8 years they would have gotten better.) Three: they put in all sorts of electronics, which is good, but they took away the sunglass holder and driver armrests, which is not good. And last but not least: the new ones cost nearly $50K. Seriously, $50K. So that’s not an option.

So off we go to see what else is out there, reasonably priced, comfortable, AWD, good gas mileage. Before I get to particulars, let me say I research everything on Consumer Reports and other sites. And nowhere, not one person, not one test driver, not one review mentioned some of the issues we found.

I thought the smaller wagons and SUVs would get much better mileage than our mid-sized RX.. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Nothing we tested got much better mileage than ours. Maybe a mile or 2 better overall. Big surprise. Not happy.

So our first stop was Prius because of, of course, the MPG. We liked the new, bigger Prius V. And if we didn’t have to climb a mountain in the winter, it would have been on the top of our list. But we were told we’d have to put on snow tires, and even then All Wheel Drive would be preferable if we ever were to get in and out with snow on the ground. So there went that idea.

Lots of people around here have Subaru’s, so that was our next stop. I drove the Outback and it was OK. Then my husband drove it. Uh oh. Sitting in the passenger seat, I felt like I was in a hole, could barely see over the dash. And the seat wasn’t up/down adjustable. Admittedly, I’m short, around 5”, but come on… this was ridiculous. The same problem with the Legacy. What were they thinking? So we tried the Forrester. I could see just fine, and the car handled OK, but the wind noise on the highway was very loud.

This seemed to be a recurring theme… either I couldn’t see from the passenger seat or the wind noise in the smaller SUV/wagons we tried was really annoying. Went to the Hyundai showroom, all the passenger seats were too low, so we didn’t even test drive. Bummer, the cars looked really nice.

Tried the highly rated Mazda CX-5, which, on paper, looked really good, and got the best mileage outside of the Prius, but it  was noisy on the highway and the rear window is tiny, cutting down on visibility. The salesperson pointed out that it has a back-up camera (most of the newer cars do). I pointed out that I wasn’t backing up on the highway but would still like to see out the rear. Oy.

I liked the Honda CRV – lots of storage places, comfortable seats I could see out of, and it was the only car we tried that had arm rests like my old Lexus. I thought it handled well, too, but again, the highway road noise was bad, the navigation system runs over $2,000 a lot for a mid-priced SUV and, oh yeah, my husband didn’t like it at all. So back to the drawing board.

The Toyota Rav 4 – which a friend loves – was nice. I could see fine, and even my husband liked the way it handled.  (I thought everything we drove handled about the same.) We found the road noise a little better. But, you’re gonna love this… when I looked at the center controls, where the GPS is, all I could see was sun glare. Figured out, if one is taller, and the angle is different, it’s better, but I couldn’t see it at all and my husband, who’s around 5’ 7” could only see about half of it. So, we thought, what about putting a portable GPS on the dash, like we have now? Fuggetaboutit. Thanks to the ridiculous cut out designed dash, there would be no place to put it. And with a portable GPS on the windshield. I could see the GPS but not the road. So, on to the next…

We tried the Chevy Equinox. Richard drove first. Surprise, surprise, it was comfortable, and quiet and we really liked it. I could see out of the passenger seat. Whoopie! Then I drove. Getting the driver’s seat in a good position was a chore, but the salesperson in the back assured me a model up had memory seats so it wouldn’t be a problem. Yeah, but… two stupid design features: One, it took me quite some time to unbuckle the seatbelt on the driver’s side. The button to unbuckle is located all the way below and right next to the console. As I’ve said, I’m short, and I also have short fingers, so this ridiculously little design was an issue for me. But, leaving an open mind, we tried a model up, which had memory retention seats. OK.. but the button to activate the memory on the seat was located on the side and down on the seat cushion. Really? What were these people thinking? I couldn’t see it, and it was hard to press when I finally found it by feeling around. So chalk up that car too.

There was another GM car from Buick, a smallish SUV that unfortunately every time my husband turned the wheel I got an elbow in the face. Reviewers also thought this car had a design flaw that was stupid.

Then we drove the Ford Escape, and miracle of miracles, we both liked it. It handled great, had all the bells and whistles (even came with a hitch for our bike rack) and was reasonably priced. So we went home to do some research. Consumer reviews weren’t pretty. People said, contrary to published reports, it got lousy gas mileage and it also had a tiny gas tank, not a good combination. But we were considering it when, the next morning, I was watching the news. Talk about timing! A lead report said the The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety just released the results of small SUVs. Most did poorly — only one of the 13 small SUVs earned its overall rating of good, the 2014 Subaru Forester. And, in the report we watched, it said the worst of the group was the Ford Escape. So much for that one,  too.

To sum up: In most cases, it was the little design missteps that turned us off, not the major components of the cars. My guess is the testers are all tall (or, certainly taller than I) and don’t take into consideration sight lines for anyone shorter than average. I’ve seen comments that this seat or that didn’t give enough leg room. But I’ve never seen a review that said anything about a car not being comfortable if you’re short.

So, what did we do? We bought a late model, low mileage Lexus RX. And here’s hoping that by the time we’re ready for another new (to us) car, some smart designers will do better.