Tsx.

I love my wife's CX-7 for a family car, but it blows on mpg's...like 19. That's full size pickup truck fuel mileage, not crossover fuel mileage.
A buddy of mine who made fun of my miata for being gay, just sold his LS1 camaro and bought a chevy Sonic to be more "fuel friendly". Who's gay now?

Like said before I dig the Mini. At least with that car you get what you pay for.

way too small. i plan to make babies.

Have you looked at Mini's reliability ratings? They are usually bottom of the barrel. Worst of the worst. One lady I work with had a base cooper and it fell apart after 60k miles. She really loved the car but the maintenance cost after the warranty expired were getting too much for her, she now has a Fit.

My vote is to wait for the CX-5. It just got finished with the EPA testing, rated at 36mpg highway for the 6mt FWD version. That's crazy for a small suv. Also, the CR-V is a heck of a good car for people in your situation. We had an '08 for two years. At first I hated and despised it, after two years I was thoroughly impressed. The newest version gets even better mpg, not as good as the CX-5 though.

I don't doubt the MINI is the best of the four you listed, but I would be very leery of the reliability (especially if you are the kind of person to keep a new car for 14 years, which it sounds like you are) and the real world fuel economy.

Good luck either way

friends girl had an 04 Mini S.
Was a raging piece of ----, and right around 60k everything just started failing. The cluster/speedo/whatever it was in the middle looked like a christmas tree: lights upon warning lights. After spending more time in the shop vs driving, the thing went up for sale and he was happy to get half of what he paid for it originally.

but its coo, y8s knows best lolz

:hustler:
make smaller babies.

lol, man, is there a car, besides durrbaru and miata that you don't hate?

Yes. A ton of them.
Very very few of them are euro cars though.
Call me close minded and obtuse, but when you've wrenched on as many failaids cars as I have, you start to differentiate between pretty cars that sound good on paper vs ones that actually work.

Said buddy's girl now drives a Lexus IS300. Never had 1 single issue with it yet.

I have a TSX and 2 kids fit just fine in it. How many babies you gonna make?

clearly this girl has never heard of the lemon law. believe me, if my ---- fails 3 times for the same thing, it goes back to the dealer.

but mini ranks in the top 10 for resale value. 53% after 5 years.

Don't get me wrong. I'd have loved to find a Lexus that met the criteria for gas mileage, price, and size. They just don't have what I need. If the IS had just a few more em pee jeez, I'd have driven one on saturday.

one. rear facing child seat is tight in a TL...

You forget. The EPA ratings are still a bit off. They don't do a good job with boosted cars because they're tuned so rich from the factory.

Rear facing seat is tight in a Forester XT, but that didn't stop me...

Does the mini really get that good of MPG? Looks like on fuelly.com the average is about 25mpg for the model you're looking at.

sure and it depends on driving habits too. my commute is mostly freeway cruise and I dont plan to lead-foot much.

Unfortunately Fuelly doesn't break the countryman down into turbo / non turbo / awd segments, but lumps them all together. And fuelecomony.gov doesn't have any user data yet. Inside Line saw a wide variation in monthly averages between 16.9 and 33.6 with a cumulative average of about 25.2. It's as good as any of their non-hybrid long termers except for the Fiat 500, Mazda 3, and Jetta TDI and you know how I feel about that one.

There's also this "sport" button that you can press to remap the throttle... if I can just leave that off...

Just pull the button out.

I also can't believe the Mini has more space than a TSX or Mazda 3.

Check out the Car and Driver or Motor Trend observed fuel economy, they drive w/ a lead foot I'm sure, so I'd take that into account.

Good point.

Definitely the mazda3 is dinky inside. though the sedan appears to have more useable cargo space in the trunk than the hatch does.

I didn't look at the TSX but I have a friend with one. The problem most of these awesome cars have is with rear-facing infant seats. Any car that has reclined front seats totally screws up the fit of the seat. It doesn't matter what the front + rear legroom numbers are if the top of the front seats is over your knees--the infant seat will never fit.

The countryman is has a more upright seating position and it makes all the difference.

Plus I just like the thing. No amount of logic can change that.

Euro Accord wagon. Bring one over for me too.

I hope you like working on cars.

What is the logic on a rear-facing baby seat again?