I grew up a hard-core Ford/Mercury guy. My first car in 1983 was a 1969 Cougar Convertible. Along the way I've had another 69 Cougar Conv, 70 Cyclone, 71 Cyclone, 68 Torino GT and a 67 T-Bird (among some other cool stuff like a 70 Rebel Machhine and a 71 Volvo P1800). These days I have a 1973 Javelin that they will probably bury me in. I also have a raft of vintage motorcycles and that is where the TC comes in.
For the last 18 years I have driven the only new vehicle I have ever owned, a 2001 2WD Nissan Frontier 2.0 (4 cyl), 5 spd manual
. It has been mind-numbingly reliable. It has 212000 miles on it with almost no failures and I'm reluctant to give it up. It is used but not abused. These days I use it mostly to haul one or even two of my small (250cc) bikes in the bed which is does quite capably. It's not too tall so I can load and unload the bikes by myself. This summer I even hauled two in the bed and two on my small trailer (including all of our gear) to California and back to Colorado. It was slow through the two mountain ranges but I could cruise 75-80 easily on the flats. Intuitively I know that I'm going to face putting some money in my Nissan or moving into the modern age.
I work in the salvage end of the auto insurance industry and I recently came across a 2015 TC XLT LWB while I was shuffling through my vast inventory of damaged vehicles. I never really paid much attention to them in the past but I took some time to crawl around in this one and I was really impressed! This one was nicely appointed and had a LOT of interior room. I also loved the seating vs cargo options. My wife's vehicle is a Nissan Juke which is also very reliable but small and not so passenger friendly. The more I looked the more I liked. After doing some measurements it was clear that I could pretty easily get two smallish motorcycles in the LWB.
So after a lot of soul searching and an equal measure of internet trolling I determined that I couldn't afford a new one but I did find a nice looking 2016 with 9K miles. It was a fleet vehicle in San Antonio but as it is set up with the seats and a nice interior I'm expecting it was a people mover and not used for hauling pallets of depleted uranium. It is currently being shipped to Denver and I hope to take possession in the next couple of weeks.
I guess my only real concern is the transmission. I'm a hands-on guy and don't have a problem keeping up with the maintenance but I get queezy and my palms start to sweat when I read all the horror stories of transmission failures. I am however, encouraged by a few of the comments from some that say they have gotten 200K + without any serious issues.
I'm looking forward to chatting with you folks and learning more about these vehicles.