In case you are new here, for the past few months, I have been preemptively test driving new cars in an effort to be prepared to make a selection when my current 2004 Honda Odyssey mini van bites the dust. I love Thelma {the name of our mini van} and have never been one of those people that has been staunchly against driving a "swagger wagon".
However, my three kids are no longer lined up in car seats in the back, so I have been opening up the options for consideration. I tried out the Mitsubishi Outlander {an SUV crossover} and while the sound system was amazing, the practicality of driving all five of us in this car at once wasn't realistic. My son and I road tripped to Walla Walla in the Mazda 6 and while it was the perfect car for a road trip for just the two of us, I just couldn't see my three kids sitting thigh to thigh in the back seat.
The benefit of trying out all kinds of different cars is that I am able to try out all kinds of different new features. My 2004, though it's the high end model, can't really compete with the features of cars today. I've learned that I love adaptive cruise control and the blind spot detector, though I could totally do without the lane departure warnings.
During my time with the Sedona, I took the kids to the local pumpkin patch and drove a team of six missionaries from all over the globe {the Russian's weren't as impressed with the Sedona's camera system as the American's were!} to Seattle to be a tourist for the day.
Out of all of the cars I have tried so far, this was our families favorite! I'm pretty sure that's a good indicator that we just aren't ready to make the switch from a mini van just yet.
The most impressive feature that had everyone talking were the middle row seats. I had no idea a reclining seat like this existed outside of business class on your international flights!
The kids would tip their seats back, flip the foot rest up and stare up at their own personal sky light in the roof of the car. Or on longer rides, they could pop the DVD player up and put on the cordless headphones and be entertained for hours.
The best part is that even with the middle seats reclined and the passenger in their full relaxed position, there is still room in the back row for passengers. What our family has grown to love in Thelma is the spaciousness of the van, and this Kia didn't disappoint. It drove like a dream, and while it did feel bigger than the current mini van I am driving, the full camera angles helped ease me into tight parking spots and city parking garages without any incidents.
I'm turning my review over to my son Aidan. As a passenger, a new driver and a 17 year old, he's got some opinions and thoughts about cars that I don't normally care about or cover when thinking about the nuts and bolts.
Aidan here. As with all the aforementioned cars, I will be helping to write the review. The two cars previous to this one were fairly mixed bags. Both included things that I would really like to have in a car like leather seats, good sound systems, and nifty tech packages, but both lacked the most important thing of all: space.
Because of my parent's decision to create many offspring and my mother and I's frequent need to transport a lot of things, we will definitely need a car with three rather spacious rows. Realistically then, the next car for our family will be a mini van simply due to the fact that we need to transport a lot of things all of the time.
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| Thelma effectively carried a glass coffee table, a TV stand, a medium sized sectional (one of those sections transformed into a bed), and three large humans with some room to spare. |
As you can probably tell, I wasn't lying about the need for space, which is why I was so excited to finally see a mini-van for review in our garage.
{and mom is back because, hello, did you all just read that? A 17 year old boy was excited to see a mini van!!! Carry on...}
I knew this car was going to be great right when I stepped in. The beautiful leather seats complimented the interior trim nicely and gave the feel of a high end luxury car. As I sat down in the middle row, I was both thrilled and shocked to see that the two middle seats were full recliner chairs.
The center console was great as well. Not only did it include an easy-to-use touch display, it also had real buttons so that you could control virtually everything without having to waste time in menus. You could also do a fair amount of controlling from the steering wheel, though those buttons were fairly small and you really had to look for the one that you wanted.
Heated and cooled front seats in addition to the heated steering wheel were all nice features as well. The Sedona rides nicely as well but it lacks some of the get-up-and-go that Thelma has. Other than a couple of very minor things, however, this is an incredibly nice car that truly gives its competition a run for their money.
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