Living in New York City, in Queens, you have the problem of two things, small driveway, small streets! So this past Saturday, decided to go car shopping with the parents and my brother for our newest addition to our car group, pretty much our options were Toyota Highlander, Honda Pilot, Toyota RAV4, and Honda CR-V. We were looking to replace our 02 Nissan Pathfinder bought used back in 05, a great all around powerful v6 , however living in New York City, the most you can get out of is 13 MPG, which is what is rated so can't really complain it does get it's it's EPA rating how bout that! It served us well but it did give us quite a number of headaches.as of recent..the suspension had some issues , 02 sensor more recently, power seat stop working, so basically, it was taking money straight out of our wallet, so we looked at the Toyota RAV4 initially , honestly thought it looks better than the CR-V, but that was about it, I wasn't really fond off the Entune system, seemed more complicated than user friendly, during the test drive though quiet, it just didn't feel smooth to me, i'm not a true car expert but the transmission wasn't feeling right for me, it felt kind of lost, so we went back to the dealer crunch some numbers than they offered us 13 Limited for $27k with tax and everything. I thought to myself not bad, but honestly, I didn't really enjoy how it drove...so we went to look at the Highlander for a brief second and it is just simply too big for our narrow driveway and to make it worse if a car slightly inches into our driveway there's no way we can pull out. We walked out had lunch then went over to Honda, same idea, salespersons shows the car explains this and that, usual why my car is better than this talk, then took it for a drive, what a difference I felt it was much smoother though maybe a tid bit noisier , but it also felt bigger inside for my body, keep in mind i'm 5'6 but kind of overweight for my height. . So we crunch some numbers again and for a EX model the model higher up than entry level LX, they came up with $26.5k before tax, then after some numbers talk, we finally settled on $24.9k wth tax and everything for the 2014. Got $3500 in trade for the Nissan which I thought was eh but what can you do, it does have 104,000 miles and quite a number of New York City dents and stuff. As a big of a Lexus fan I am GS being my favorite GS owners , I felt that I wouldn't be happy even with a certified as having a bad experience with the Pathfinder, which I should mention was certified too. So just thought i'd share my family's car shopping experience this past weekend. And take a peak at the Honda. It just wasn't my time yet to go out and purchase a Lexus , I do love the CR-V though and I have no regrets. Also being that this is my first new car purchase, rather than used like the Pathfinder and tips and points anybody would like to share? Thanks for reading! Though it's not a Lexus!

 

Congrats. CR-V is a solid choice

 

Congrats, CR-V is a great little SUV.

 

congrats. will be interested in hearing more impressions and updates over time.

 

Congrats!

We have the same Honda CRV. We got it new in 2012 and we still really like it, no complaints at all. My wife just wishes the rear hatch had a power option. Thats all.

We have 16k miles on it currently.

 

Nice choice.
We like our '13.

 

Thanks everyone, so far put about 135 miles on it since Saturday evening, what a still over half a tank what a difference from the Pathfinder which would be less than half already, so far everything is well, got the Bluetooth all setup for the phone and the ride is great for our first mini-SUV. Joeb427, how many hiles have you put in?

 

3500 or so.
Much improved in just about everything over the last generation we owned and the last gen wasn't bad..