Consumers' Favorites: Best Cars for Long Road Trips

Edmunds.com

Consumers' Favorites: Best Cars for Long Road Trips

A long road trip can entail anything from a coastal cruise to a trek through the mountains for some outdoor sports. We asked what vehicle would best suit your needs.

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ebeaudoin

Really surprised to see no minivans on the list. My choice would be a Honda Odyssey Touring Elite. Nav, DVD, leather, premium sound, etc.

stever

You said it @ebeaudoin - we like to meet up and camp with my brother and his wife, who live 1,000+ miles away. They bring their Odyssey and we drive whatever minivan we currently own. Can't beat them for comfort and ease of hauling toys. Wagons and hatches are okay, but it's nice being able to put a couple of bikes inside the van.

berri

I always wondered how the minivan and it's sliding doors all of a sudden got such a bum rap. Was it Yuppie status climbers, or maybe Detroit quietly egged it on to push generally higher profit margin SUV's. I mean when this all first seem to start happening, I really couldn't see any rational reason why someone would dump a minivan for an Explorer, but they did in big numbers. You basically spent more for less room, worse ride and a less stable balance in an emergency. On the plus side, I think today's crossovers have remedied a lot of that.

stever

Besides the soccer mom stigma, a SUV will offer more ground clearance, more towing capacity (sometimes) and we're down to just one minivan that offers AWD.

Other than the Mazda 5, which seems a bit narrow, all the remaining minivans have gotten bigger though. My '09 Grand Caravan is almost as bad to drive around town as a crew cab pickup.

And yeah, we could live with a Mazda CX-5 just fine - just get a hitch rack for the bikes.