We owned a 2000 Nissan Maxima GLE. At the time of purchase my wife had just received a new job as a Clinical Leasion for a Pharma company and part of her contract required her to be driving a car that was no more than 3 years old so the Maxima had to go. So what would be the next car? Well the Maxima had been great but the drawbacks were the fact that it only got 27 mpg at BEST and the fact that it HAD to have premium gas (and lets remember premium was around $3.59 per gal at the time). So we looked at a number of similarly equipped sedans that got a bit better FE and on regular (thought the Passat was also premium due to the turbo). In the end we were able to get a TCH with no waiting because the orderer (is that a word?) backed out and it was equipped the way we wanted. The FE is >10 mpg better than the Maxima and the fule costs $0.40 per gal less...with the miles she is putting on the car this is a significant savings (car will have 15k miles as of tonight or tomorrow).

The fact that we know the Toyota will be fairly trouble free for a long time is/was also part of the decision.

Please click here to support my Livestrong Challange ride. Oct 26, 2008