We really didn’t agonize, in fact we weren’t even looking for a car.

We had just finished the umpteenth repair on the world’s worst Honda ever. (Make no mistake; the 2001 Civic is the worst Honda ever made.) My wife had been stranded many times on a terrible central New Jersey commute. Surrounded by huge SUV’s and huge potholes she could not take it any more.

We wanted something bigger, safe and able to fight the mess. In short, we wanted an SUV. Nether of us were truck drivers and had been used to small cars so we looked at the small ones first. Honda was out, but we had tried the CR-V before and didn’t care for it. The Rav4 and the Land Rover Freelander were way too tight for me and way too expensive. We ended up trying to choose between a Subaru Forester and a Mercury Mariner. Although we liked the Forester (and almost purchased one) one feature of the Mariner caught our attention, a hybrid option that gave good mileage. Sadly we could not afford the Mariner Hybrid at that time, but also could not let the good gas mileage go, so we dropped SUVs from our list and switched to mid size cars.

After several months, we were down to 5 cars: the Toyota Camry and Prius (we were going to give it a try, why not?) the Mercury Milan, The Volvo s40 and the SAAB 93. The Volvo and the SAAB were off our list fast because of their high price and the fact that they are a Mazda 3 and Pontiac G6 in disguise. We checked out the Milan and really liked it, particularly the all-wheel-drive option. We then went to Toyota and looked at the Prius and Camry. No one helped us. We didn’t like the look of the new Camry with its chubby dimensions and Jimmy Durante nose grill. We left uncertain.

I talked with some co-workers about cars and discovered two of them had Nissan Altimas and loved them. I had never even considered them. When we were researching SUVs, we had read horror stories about the X-Terra, so we never bothered. However, on our way to Toyota again we decided to stop at a small local Nissan dealer and give the Altima a shot. The very first car we saw when we got out of our car was a lone Nissan Altima Hybrid. I didn’t even know there was one. We sat in several Altimas and were quite impressed at the features that came standard, but nothing prepared us for the Hybrid. This car drove like a dream, it came with Anti-lock breaks, traction control, curtain air-bags, separate climate controls, push button start and a bunch of other things that were extra on the regular Altima and Camry. It shot to the top of our list.

When we finally got to Toyota, the cockiest salesman I had met in my months of searching sat us in the gaudiest Camry I had ever seen. My wife hated it almost instantly and kept hitting her leg on the center console. Our last hope for a Toyota was the Prius. It was OK, but by this point we were used to something bigger, and even though it had ok leg and headroom, the lack of a telescopic steering wheel made the extra leg room next to useless. Nether of them drove like the Altima.

It took another week to make up our minds, but an upcoming trip to Vermont, that we knew the Honda would croak on, forced our hand. We went back to dealer and purchased the very basic one we had tested a few weeks earlier. We were the first customers to purchase the only Hybrid they had.

My wife and I were not looking for the best hybrid in our range, we were looking for the best over-all car and the Altima Hybrid was both.