Post Update: Mazda5 Review and more Sexism from Huggies

These two items don't go together at all, but I wanted to update each of them, and neither of them felt like a full post, so I mashed them together.

When I reviewed our then-new-to-us Mazda 5 (a year ago yesterday), we'd never driven it in snow of any import. Now that we have, I'm unhappy to report that though it goes OK in the snow, it's not an easy car to get out of a parking space in snow and ice.  The zoom-zoom of Mazda advertising fame mostly comes through in front wheel drive that all too eagerly spins the front wheels in a futile attempt to move the car.  Twice on solo drives around the city in post-Christmas snow, I found myself feeling like a solitary Ernest Shackleton piloting the micro-van version of the Endurance. OK, perhaps a little dramatic there, but when I got into these spots, I really didn't feel like I'd get out.  I managed to get out of one snow wallow by rocking back and forth in reverse and drive.  The death knell seems to be stepping on the accelerator.  In our succession of Honda Accords, I could power and slide myself out of a predicament like this.  In the Mazda, I had to just take whatever inches of movement I could achieve while idling forward or back.  The second parking space, I don't think I would have extricated myself without the help of a passerby with a shovel.  

The risk of getting stuck again inspired me to put a bucket of salt in the car and invest in a portable shovel that stores in three small pieces in the shallow tray in the back cargo area.  So far, these steps have had a prophylactic effect: no snow to worry about has fallen since I put them in the car.  It's a shame, because the shovel looks really cool, and I'd like to review its functionality.

In other update news, I found Huggies at the sexist advertising game again.

Unlike the last ad I pointed out in this space, this one doesn't have explicit text saying fatherss need extra-good leak protection.  This one just uses an image that I feel almost certainly would not be used featuring a mother by any company.  Sure, triplets are overwhelming.  Even so, moms just don't get depicted in ads this way - as overwhelmed, in-over-their-heads incompetent goobers.  In the comments section on that earlier post, we talked about the fact that if it seems like a sexist message, but we can't put our finger on exactly what it is, maybe we should live with it because at least an ad for a baby product has a father in it.  That conclusion doesn't sit right with me.  If dads are going to appear rarely in ads, I'd rather they weren't depicted as incapable to handle the job of parent.

Sunday Haiku: Planning Ahead

My midlife crisis

car will be a black Volvo

P Eighteen Hundred.

Confirmed: cheap gas is...well...cheap

When I reviewed our Mazda 5, I complained that the gas mileage wasn't as good as we'd hoped.  Rather than the rated 22/28 city/highway, we were seeing around 18 in the city.  Now that we've gone on our first road trip in the 5, I have more to say about both useability and fuel efficiency.

Audi A3 owner and Mazda 5 owner enjoy the big sea-foam.

First, we found the car to be quite comfortable for our family of four and more than our share of beach gear on a recent trip to the Outer Banks.  Turns out our 5 had the most cargo capacity in the trip fleet, which also consisted of a Toyota Prius and an Audi A3 wagon.  In addition to our luggage, we ended up with 5 boogie boards, the beach shovel,  some buckets and the Pro Kadima.  We did draw the line at sand chairs.  The 5 may be bigger than a Prius and an A3, but it's still a microvan.  With the extra stuff, we were able to pack the back (third row seats folded, of course) and still allow visibility out the back window above the load.  We'd heard Mazda 5 owners complain that it doesn't provide much space for the little passenger-oriented stuff (e.g. sunglasses) on a trip.  We found it has plenty of space for us.  We found space for each boy's backpack, one for the parents and the snack bag.  The cruise control runs predictably and well; it's a good highway cruiser.

The one complaint on a hot summer drive was that the air conditioning seemed at times to need a "reboot".  After working quite well for hundreds of miles, both the cooling and the air movement of the fan would just start to poop out for a while.  We developed a technique of turning everything off for a few minutes, then turning the fan back on before turning the A/C back on.  This voodoo may have been a lot of foolishness, but it did seem to work to get the cool air flowing again.

Second, the fuel efficiency: it's not terrible on the highway.  We recorded an average of 25.9 mpg with a high of 30.2  Again, we'd love to get better fuel efficiency, but that's a marked improvement over our city mileage.  Speaking of which, for those of you who use your supermarket discount gas program (ours is Giant Eagle's FuelPerks at GetGo), you may be getting exactly what you pay for when you buy that cheap gas.  For  a while, especially when they created the virtuous circle of food purchases earning gas discounts and gas purchases earning food discounts, I got my gas almost exclusively at GetGo.  Over four months, though, I've recorded an average of 18.8 mpg city on GetGo tanks and 19.9 mpg city from other gas stations.  I haven't done the full break-even math to figure in the gas discounts and the food discounts I earn by getting gas there, but I have adapted my policy to only get gas there when I'm going to use my discount on a big tank. My neighbor tells me Sunoco and BP return the best fuel efficiency.

Finally, having bought the 5 in November, I've discovered a design issue that only presented itself in the summer and will only affect certain drivers.  I carry a Leatherman Micra on my keychain, I have hairy legs, and I wear shorts.  The way my keys hang out of the ignition, the little round rivet-hinge-things on the Micra yank painfully at my leg hair.  It's a small price to pay for having a life-saving multi-tool at the ready, but it does hurt.  My brother-in-law fessed up to having the same new right inner knee-cap bald spot, and he doesn't drive a Mazda 5, so this problem afflicts other cars, too.

Mazda5 Review

As promised in my farewell post to our Honda Accord, here's a review of the Mazda5 we got to replace it.  It's a 2008 Sport model in Galaxy Gray.  Sport is Mazda's way of saying "lowest".  After seven weeks with the car, we've formed some opinions to share.

We're pleased.  We've gotten along with a sedan most of our married life.  We had a few years with a fun old Volvo 240 DL wagon.  Mostly, though, it's been sedans; we've driven two Honda Accords over the last 11 years.

I mention our car history because I believe that the car you replace with a Mazda5 will really affect how you feel about the 5.  The most striking thing about the 5 is that it's hard to place in a category.  It's not a proper minivan.  It is, in fact, a microvan.  It seats 6: driver and passenger, then two individual seats in the second row and then a child-size third row bench.  It is four inches shorter and an inch narrower than our 1997 Honda Accord was.  That's a lot of seating in a very small, city-sized package.  It fits better in our 1915 one-car garage than our sedan did.  Moving from a sedan, it feels very roomy and flexible inside.  It's great that our boys sit a foot apart from each other in their own seats.  The third row folds flat, either split or all together.  The second row does not fold flat but does fold down and slide forward.  Our Christmas tree - our biggest cargo to date - fit just fine.  If one were to replace a full-size minivan with this car, I would predict that that buyer would feel cramped and miss the features that come in a minivan.  But for former sedan owners, it's a big vista.

Twelve years ago on a trip to Hong Kong, we saw lots of cars like this: short wheelbase, tall roof, flexible interior space.  I don't know why the American market doesn't create the same demand for forms like this here.

We'd read reviews knocking the 5's lack of places for your junk.  It's true; there's very little bin or console space.  Up front, A few little dishy trays flank the steering wheel.  Obligatory cupholders sit between the driver's and passenger's seat.  There's a lidless void behind them about 4 inches square and 5 inches deep.  Wells in the doors swallow a bit more stuff, and the glovebox seems to have a mother-in-law apartment up behind the main storage bin on its door.  In the middle row, a tray cleverly folds out of one seat to bridge the gap between the two.  It holds a pair of cupholders and a mesh bag with a removable lid/tray.  In the third row, you'll hold your things in your hand, thank you very much.  We're not the kind of people who keep all of our worldly possessions and garbage in our car, so it shouldn't be that bad (he said before the first long-distance road trip).

The 5 drives nicely.  Again, coming from a 14-year-old car, this one definitely feels peppier.  The controls are intuitive (except for an "auto" setting on the heater that we just ignore).  It's a little too zoom-zoom at times, as we've spun the front tires on wet pavement.  Yup.  Badass microvan.  The driving position is good, and it's as easy to parallel park as our old car.

Just for reference, the other car we seriously considered was the Kia Rondo.  A homely little stationwagon (which must now be called a crossover), it sold here from 2007-2009.  It's now sold to fleets only in America.  We liked the fact that some Rondos offered optional seating for 7.  A conventional 3-seat bench in the second row plus a two-seat bench similar to the Mazda's behind it.  That third row is less convenient because the second row has to fold forward to provide access.  In the Mazda,when the storage tray is stowed, passengers can walk between the second row seats to the third row.  The Rondo seems like a very useful vehicle, and our friends who owned one were about to replace their other car with a second one.  It's homely, though, and we find ourselves wishing for six seats with some frequency but for seven almost never.

The 5 does unfortunately appear to have one big downside: fuel efficiency.  We knew we were spoiled with 30 mpg in the Accord and that we'd trade off efficiency for whatever added space we acquired in a new vehicle.  The 2008 5 is rated around 22 city and 28 highway.  So far, in winter city driving, we've observed more like 18.  Thinking low air pressure in the tires might be the culprit, I checked at our last fillup and found them at about 60% of the 51 psi limit.  Pumping them up to 48, I expected to see an improvement in fuel efficiency.  So far, no dice. :(  My friend says winter gas with its higher ethanol content might be at least part of the culprit.  Maybe if we didn't waste fuel burning rubber on wet days, we'd do better, too.

On the whole, we're quite pleased.  We'd told people for years that this would be our next car, and it's exciting to have one.  I like the fact that few people drive them, which makes it feel more exotic and unique.  The flexible passenger and cargo space helps for sure.  I'd recommend it.

Farewell, Old Steed

We bid farewell to a fine piece of reasonable transportation today. In 2004, as a three-person family, we upgraded from the 1990 Honda Accord we'd been driving (the Golden Dragon) to a 1997 Honda Accord that we bought at Frenchy's Auto.  Frenchy's sign bore the slogan "Home of Reasonable Transportation".  Frenchy and his friendly Russian henchmen salesmen didn't give us a very clear explanation for why they were selling a 7-year-old car with 62,000 miles on it for under Blue Book, but once our mechanic checked the car out, we didn't worry much about the "why".

The car came with the mag wheels and chrome trim strips you see pictured.  It really was reasonable transportation.  We loved getting 30 miles to the gallon.  We loved the dependability of a Honda.  We loved driving a sedan when lots of people seem to purchase an eight-seat behemoth when their first child is born.  Our first child thought this car was very cool.  Not quite two years old when we bought it, he used to call it the Boo Tashz (blue car), so that's the only name we've ever given it.  My wife's grandfather had a standard stable of names he'd apply to cars (blue goose, green hornet, midnight marauder).  We named the Golden Dragon in honor of his tradition and in honor of our second apartment, which had - for no apparent reason - golden dragons carved over the front door.  But I digress.  We commuted in the car and flogged it on road trips.  We toted luggage and groceries and Christmas trees in its trunk.

Over the last few months, we had had repeated overheating problems.  Our family could tolerate running the heat even when it was warm out in order to keep the temperature needle steady.  Chauffeuring others got embarrassing, though.  After several bottles of coolant and some attempted fixes, our mechanic finally determined that the head gasket was leaking and that the coolant was mixing with the oil.  This is, like, bad.

So we replaced the Boo Tashz with a Mazda 5, which I'll review in this space very soon.  We'd wrenched so much value out of the car, but the needed repairs would have cost more than the current Blue Book price.  Without the entrepreneurial savvy of Frenchy's, we decided the best path was to sell the car for parts.  At least one of the parts - a side mirror - came from the parts dealer to whom we sold the car.  It was originally on a 1996 Accord.  It's a real circle of life kind of thing.  So, the nice tow guy came and hauled it away.

For some reason, two memories stick out with this car, both featuring Teddy.  

The first one shows the kind of sticky situations I get myself into all the time.  We'd gotten three tickets to a Pitt football game a few years back, and the boys and I were running late on game day.  We hoped to meet up with some friends who were tailgating and walk in with them.  I was thrilled to get a pretty cheap parking space without too much searching.  In my excitement, I popped the trunk, got out, hustled the boys out, paid the attendant, reflexively locked the doors and then realized that the engine was still running.  Oops.  Thank goodness I'd popped the trunk, and thank goodness Teddy was a slender but smart three-year-old.  The Honda featured a pass-through door from the back seat into the trunk.  It's narrower than the arm rest, like a little doggy door.  I think most people use this aperture for skis.  I reached in the trunk and found that the pass-through was blessedly unlocked from that side.  I explained Teddy's mission to him: slide through there and unlock a door.  He gamely climbed in the trunk, snaked through, unlocked a rear passenger door and saved the day.  We didn't tell mommy about that one for a long time afterward.

The second memory came on a long road trip.  The first summer after I'd gone part time, I did the math and realized that because I work Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, I could leave on a trip with the boys on Tuesday night and come back Sunday night having burned only one vacation day.  Paige was busy with her job, so I planned a father and sons road trip to Maine to see their grandparents at their cottage.  We were to stop in Queens and stay with my sister and brother-in-law in their one-bedroom apartment.  Piloting the car alone, I did fine across Pennsylvania and New Jersey but missed an exit or two in New York.  We got more and more out of our way.  Exhausted from a workday and then a 250 mile drive, I woke up the sleeping boys by yelling curse words.  (This ended my 2009 father-of-the-year bid.)  Paige called just before she went to bed around 11:00, and I told her that I'd just F-bombed my way across Queens. 

We made it, though, through a sweltering night in an apartment where the air refused to move and then on up to some freezing beach days in Maine.  We enjoyed good family time, and I proved to myself that I could keep the boys alive (if not simultaneously keeping myself in control) as a very temporary single parent.  On the way back, we stayed with my brother and his family in Massachusetts.  Setting off pretty early for the long pull back to Pittsburgh, I was thrilled that we'd made it all the way into New Jersey by about 9:30 am.  It was three and a half hours without stopping because the boys had fallen asleep.  We found it difficult to pile up chunks of drive time like that because one of the kids usually had to eat or pee.  Anyway, we're rolling up a long hill on I-287 and Teddy without warning manifests motion sickness.  He manifested it all over his clothes and car seat and a little on his brother's car seat and on his brother's backpack.  I pulled off onto the shoulder 300 miles from home with a back seat full of vomit.  I did what had to be done, pulling both seats out, scraping clean what I could, stripping Teddy naked on the shoulder and changing his clothes.  I used every wet wipe we had.  We reassembled back in the blue car and set off for home.  Knowing the delay had eaten up all of the gains of the early morning departure, I worried about the length of the rest of the journey home.  Charlie piped up from the back seat "Boy, now we're really going to have to F-bomb it across Pennsylvania to make it home."