Hello folks, a brief summary - I'm a British expat living in lovely (!) Lima, Peru. My daily duties consist of school drop-off and pick-up of my oldest (nearly 6 yrs) mini-her, and back and to to work, then at the end of the day taking mini her and mini-me (2 yrs old) plus A.N. Other (young adult) back home from their grandparents' place. All of this is over a mixture of pot-holed 2 lane, speed bumps for trucks, the Pan-Americana highway, and gravel/broken concrete dirt tracks. I also need to have occasional trips for work up into the mountains, about an 8 hour drive, 4 hours on the highway, then 4 hours through the mountains climbing over 10,000 ft with no cell phone coverage for miles at a time. Reliability is a concern, I've done the trip several times in the LR3, Mazda 2 and Mazda 3, but I haven't done the trip in the WJ...
My wife uses a Discovery 3 (LR3) with the Ford 4.0 V6. It's safe and it's expensive. It's LPG converted so it's not as horrible on fuel as it could be. This is what we nearly always use for trips as it's the safest option, airbags everywhere and it weighs 2.5 tons. My wife genuinely does need to have an SUV type vehicle for her commute, the roads over to her hospital are truly awful pot-holed dirt tracks, and when it rains it can become treacherous (her hospital is on the side of a hill). She's not a car person, and despite my best efforts won't learn to drive more defensively, so she stays with the big safe SUV. In the afternoons she'll also often take the kids somewhere.
I am currently driving an '03 Grand Cherokee (4.7), and to be honest the fuel costs are just getting too much with 2 SUVs - we got it after I had a couple of near misses with other SUVs (one nearly rear-ending me, another would have T boned me as he ran a red light, both times I managed to get out of the way), however it made me think a lot about the SUV into mid/small hatchback type accidents with the kids in the back, and I allowed myself to get talked into selling our Mazda 3 and getting the WJ. We'd said we'd do what was necessary to accommodate the fuel costs, but we haven't. On top of that my mini-her has needed more therapy, so that is now costing around 25% of my salary, and we've had to start the payments to enroll mini-me in school for 2020.
I've got to be honest, I'm not sure buying the WJ was the right move. Fuel costs aside, there are so many different types of accident, and in some the WJ will be worse than a car, especially with an increased risk of it getting tipped over. Coupled with that is that I've got much less chance of avoiding an accident in the first place with an SUV compared to a car.
Here, about 50-60% of what is on the road are small hatchbacks/sedans, majority of which are 1980s/1990s models. 20-25% are SUVs (of all sorts, including a lot of 'modern'ish Chinese SUVs), and the rest are buses and trucks (including a lot from the 60s and 70s) - if one of them hits you on the Pan Americana it won't matter whether you're in an SUV or a car. Driving standards are, in general, terrible. No respect for priorities, traffic lights, stop signs, u-turns without looking, drink-driving, overt-taking on the shoulder or blind corners, etc.
The options I am currently considering:
1)Keep the WJ. The family like the WJ, I don't mind it (for an SUV with an autobox). Fuel costs are horrible - about 10% of salary goes on fuel for the WJ, with the Mazda 2 and Mazda 3 we had fuel was about 4% of my salary. It currently needs engine mounts, and a few bushes besides normal maintenance, but there are several boxes winging over here from Rockauto to fix that. It's got about 100k miles on it now, and I'm worried some bigger ticket items may start need looking at.
2)Get another Mazda 3. I liked mine and to be honest it was a mistake selling it, although at least it got my wife's cousin's family out of the deathtrap they had previously, and into something better. The only real negative is trying to find one, 90% of the market is the 1.6 engine, I'd be wanting the 2.0. Also my wife would prefer something with a bigger boot in the event of a rear-end prang. There's one sedan for sale at the mo, price is in the right sort of area, but it has old number plates, so they'd need changing before driving it which is a monumental paperwork faff and a delay of several weeks, also having checked it's not had it's Revision Tecnica (annual road-worthiness inspection) for over a year.
3)Get another Mazda 2. Per 2) above really, although I do agree it is a bit on the small side for safety, especially rear-end protection. It would save a lot of money however, and put a smile on my face. We had a brand new one for 3 years when we first moved here in 2013, I liked it but when mini-me came along it had to go, I just couldn't fit him in rear facing plus the 4th person.
4)An E36. There are currently 3 for sale, a 318ti, a 325 and a 328. Fun, and cheap short-term. With some Bilstein HDs and some knobblies great for the road surfaces I frequent. However, over 4 years probably the most expensive option due to maintenance and cost of importing bits. I have previously had a ti and a 325 (but the TDS the 2.5 turbo diesel) and I did like 'em. Safety, erm, well.... The crash tests don't make happy reading, and I imagine even a modern compact would go through one like a knife through butter. (Side note, I saw an offset head-on between a 1st gen BMW Mini and a Peugeot 406, the Mini went straight through the 406. Mini was flat back to the bulkhead, but there it stopped, the 406...I just hope it didn't have a passenger in the front seat)
5)An 8th gen Accord (2.4 manual), unfortunately there are none currently for sale in my price range (ie what I can get for the WJ) nor have there been for 2 months. Back in July I was all set to get a 2009 model with only 60k miles on the clock, before the buyer I had for my WJ left me waiting at the notary and never arrived to do the transfer. If any come up in price range it would be the preferred option.
6) 2008/2009 Impreza hatch, bog standard 2.0 version. Erm, not really sure what to say, similar to the Mazda 3, slower in a straight line, slightly better safety specs.
7)2005 ish Volvo S40 2.4. Again, similar to the Mazda 3, better safety, not as fun. Engine has a timing belt so have to assume it's due one.
I've occasionally considered VAG (A3,A4,Jetta, Passat) products, but I'm wary of them from a reliability/maintenance viewpoint, and I've never really clicked with them in general.
Am I over-analysing the safety side of things? Am I not concerned enough? To put it in context, everyday my in-laws take my son in a Tercel with no child seat to pre-school (I have no other option for him getting to pre-school), and occasionally both my kids out and about in the Fortuner, safer vehicle but again no damn child seats. Unfortunately it's a cultural issue, and the favourite phrase is when you're trying to explain problems or risks is "Ahhh, no pasa nada" (nothing will happen)...
Thanks gents, this is exactly what I found when I researched the 4.7 last year. Of course I've no idea how the PO treated the WJ...
