what year had most room?

How many miles to the repair?

I can remember when I was in college, a 7 footer drove a Pinto - from the rear seat!

Ed

Hubby loved his Corolla FX 16 (The "Pocket Rocket") for both head and leg room, but you're *way* taller than he is (He's 6'2"); besides, I doubt you can find one of those these days. Have you asked a dealership about this?

Natalie

You're mean

LOL

Natalie

You might want to take a look at a 500, lots of room and 29 MPG with excellent reliability ratings to boot

"Dave Rasmussen" wrote

60's Fords or Mercs will give you most room, but won't do crap for your mileage. I drive a Toyota Sienna van, but I am a shorty (only 6-2).

BTW Dave, How's the weather up there

-- wingnut

At 5'7" I'm probably not the person to talk about headroom, but early 90's All-Trac Corolla Wagons had a high roof line like the AWD Tercel Wagons so perhaps that is the model you were thinking of?

The Scion xB looks like it has a lot of headroom, have you sat in one of those?

When I was growing up, the man who was listed in the Guinness Book as the world's tallest man lived about a mile or two west of where I lived. I'd occasionally see him walking down the street, I heard that he drove a VW Beetle from the back seat.

Robert Wadlow - you're from the Midwest?

Natalie

Yup, I think that was his name and Yup, I'm from the Midwest. Grew up in the Edgewater/Rogers Park neighborhood on the north side of Chicago.

Pardon Mike. He likes to make up facts. He is referring to the Ford 500. Consumer Reports just noted that the station wagon/SUV version or the 500 has a much worse than average repair record so you can bet the sedan is unreliable too.

It's not a fact if it's made-up, but I get what you're saying, and you're right

:-)

Natalie

Parents of his dates musta hated him...

I found one.......

LOL and Craig will be driving it again. He's decided to graduate from my old high school, so he's going to be staying with my mom, which means he'll have access to his old car...

Oh stop crying, you weenie

Natalie

I coulda sworn snipped-for-privacy@alpha1.csd.uwm.edu (Dave Rasmussen) typ'd:

Try a Scion xB. It's a ROOMY econo**BOX** and I was impressed enough with it that I've got one on order, and part of the reason is the large amount of headroom compared with any other car I've ever driven.

-Don

Richard Moll (Bull on "Night Court") has this thing for full size

70's Cadillacs - Gee, I wonder why... ;-P

When you go looking for cars, and you find something that /almost/ fits you if you could only get another inch or two, here's something to consider: Seats can be moved. Seat brackets can be modified, or totally fabricated from scratch. And there's nothing stopping you from taking it down until the seat is hitting the floor.

If you can't do it yourself, try either a welding shop/ blacksmith, or a race car chassis fabricator, or a custom upholstery shop. Or possibly a shop that installs handicapped mobility aids - they're used to doing a dozen impossible things before lunch.

If the seat brackets are a separate part that bolts to the seat and bolts to the car chassis, that makes it really easy to drop it down a couple of inches, or an inch at the front and two at the back, or back two inches and down two.

Flat stock drilled and bent into new brackets, with gussets or cross-braces made of mild tubing or channel as needed. Worst case, you make a new square sub-frame that the seat mounts to, then you can figure out how to bracket it to the existing mounting points and end up sitting where you want. It's not brain surgery, but you have to be a bit creative.

Just be darned careful with the wiring if the seat has side bolster airbags, or passenger sensors, or other fancy stuff built in. And make sure the brackets are over-engineered, so they aren't the weak spot that breaks in an accident. When in doubt, make it beefy.

And if you can, save the original seat brackets - you probably should put it back to stock when you sell the car, to eliminate liability issues if the next guy gets hurt.

-->--

You mean - Consumer Reports PREDICTED the Freestyle would have a much worse than average repair record.

My Father purchased a Freestyle earlier this year. It has not had a single problem.

In this particular case, how many Freestyle owners do you think actually responded to the CR popularity contest ballot for 2005? 10, 20 ,2000? CR doesn't have any actual statistically significant statistics on the reliability of the Freestyle (it is not even listed in their survey results). CR only says predicted reliability is worse than average. They don't actually know. They don't even have their usual corrupt survey results to base this on, just their "opinion." And the really funny thing - I subscribe to CR online. They have a section for owner's feedback that you don't get in the magazine. 41 people have provided feedback on the Freestyle. 35 of them gave the Freestyle top ratings (5 out of 5) - 85%. The other six all gave it a four out of five rating. The only significant reliability complaint was the radio - apparently one owner didn't like the radio and had it replaced multiple times. They had 26 people comment on the Ford 500 - 23 gave it a five out of five - 92%. The Toyota Avalon only had

31 of 41 people who commented on the car give it five stars - 76%. More people that bothered to post a review griped about the Avalon's reliability that about the 500's. Has to make you wonder about the whole CR system, when the car they love the most got a worse ratings from their subscribers that a car they tanked.

So, it seems to me, the Freestyle should have a very high predicted reliability, since about the worst thing anyone had to say was that the CD changer was slow.

Ed

The basic problem with CR is it is only their subscribers, who may chose to reply, are polled. With nearly 19,000,000 new vehicle being sold annually in the US the opinions, good or bad, of their circulation members of just thousands is unscientific and meaningless.

mike hunt

"Mike Hunter" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@ptd.net...

While I totally agree that the CR data collection scheme is not statistically valid, I do think you are underestimating CR circulation. They have somewhere between 4.5 million and 5 million subscribers. Now they never actually tell you how many of those actually respond to their annual survey / plea for money letter Nor, how many of those responded to any particular car. I am confident upset Customers are much more likely to respond than happy consumers. I also believe if you sell more cars, you are likely to have more unhappy Customers. I also think people who read Consumer Report are likely to bias their responses to reflect CR's opinions. And finally, advertising really works - there is no other reason for Buick to rate as one of the top brands in reliability (according to JD Powers), while Pontiac is worse than average. So all the BS Toyota spouts about reliability is working. Personally, if I was running Ford, I'd hire the Toyota car advertising firm. Ford has some of the worst commercials on TV. Toyota commercials are often silly, but they appear to appeal to people. The latest "Moving Forward" campaign is one of the least meaningful campaigns ever. On the other hand, Toyota truck ads are ridiculous. The Tacoma ads are just plain stupid (oh yeah, I am sure a Tacoma can look like new after a direct meteor strike). And the Tundra commercials are incredibly stupid. The Tundra ads essentially conceded that Ford builds the best trucks. The pitiful F150/Tundra comparison ads are really sad. After watching he latest Tundra ads, I am very glad I didn't buy a Tundra - not that I want an F150 either. At least Dodge and Chevy act like they build a good product. The best Toyota can do is make weak comparison that highlight their truck's second (or is it fourth) rate status.

Any how back to CU - I was very impressed that 41 people that subscribe to CU online actually liked their Freestyle enough to post a comment (41 with four out of five stars or better - mostly better). And it was very impressive that none were unhappy. Even CU's pet, the Avalon, had a couple of owners post negative comments.

Ed