Suzuki SX4

Suzuki SX4 station-wagon.

It’s beginning to look like our car-choice to replace the CR-V will be the Suzuki SX4 station-wagon.
No doubt this will prompt fevered blustering from West Bridgewater that I should purchase a gigantic gas-swilling four-door Chevrolet pickup-truck, even though what we’re trying to do here is get away from a cheer-uck.
Suzuki SX4 for the following reasons:
-Primary is the fact Toyota has discontinued its AWD (all-wheel-drive) version of its fabulous Matrix (a station-wagon), which is what I wanted to replace the CR-V with.
-An alternative was the Subaru, but we road-tested a few a couple years ago, and they like to tightly confine the driver.
-I’ve road-tested both the new CR-V and the Toyota RAV4. The new CR-V replaces the side-hinged rear-door with a top-hinged hatch, but the RAV4 hasn’t. —Why should I back a car in just to keep the rear-door from hitting the garage-door, when I can buy a top-hinged hatch that won’t?
This makes as much sense as buying a bed-cover so that groceries don’t get snowed-on in an open pickup bed.
Not to mention 80 bucks every week for a fill up.
Plus Linda would be saddled with an aircraft-carrier instead of a car.
I remember it took two moves to park the E250 at mighty Weggers.
Here we are at the Canandaigua YMCA and a giant Ford dually was trying to exit the parking-lot.
No wonder it was swilling gas. It took 20 minutes of navigating at idle — just to exit.
Back up about three feet; spin front-wheels over to full left lock; pull forward about three feet; spin front-wheels over to full right lock; back up; and on-and-on it went — at least five moves.
It took ten minutes just to get turned 90 degrees.
Plus another ten minutes to pull out of the parking-lot. And perish-the-thought, if someone had the awful temerity and unmitigated gall and horrific audacity to come down the street, the dually had to back out-of-the-way and start over.
What the guy needed was a crane to lift his truck outta the parking-lot (and then place it gingerly onto the street).
Imagine trying to do all this without power-steering. Quite a few of our older buses lacked power-steering, which meant standing up to lever the wheel.
-Both the new CR-V and the RAV4 are rather large. They also sit rather high. They ain’t cars......
-I also need all-wheel-drive (AWD). If the Susy-Q weren’t AWD I’d pass. AWD means I can skip blowing out the driveway (in most cases — over eight inches it gets blown out).
The girl who cooks dinner for the 93-year-old nosy neighbor traded her Jeep-Liberty for an SX4.
So I asked to look at it.
It’s a so-called “crossover;” but to me it’s a car.
Folded up the rear-seats still partially block the rear-doors, but they also fill the gap like the CR-V did, plus the remaining floor is flat (a Sube ain’t).
And the floor-height is nowhere near as high as the CR-V.
It’s pretty much the same as the Matrix, only smaller; a fair approximation of the Faithful Hunda — the BEST car we ever owned.
Who woulda thought 40 years ago I would eventually be buying a Jap car (“I can still see that oily black pillar-of-smoke towering above that ship”). We sure have come a long way since the Blue Bomb.
But I have owned quite a few Jap cars. The Faithful Hunda was a Jap car, as is the Bucktooth Bathtub.
And regrettably Chevrolet doesn’t make anything as good as a Jap car. I’d be interested in the Chevrolet HHR (we rented one at the shadow of the mighty De Land water-tower in Floridy), but it ain’t all-wheel-drive. (Plus it’s like driving a submarine. The windows are like gun-slits.)
I remember years ago when Honda fielded its first car; a tiny 600cc mini. It seemed a joke, but now look at Honda.
So now Suzuki is doing the same: making cars as well as motorbikes. That leaves Yamaha and Kawasaki — I predict I’ll be buying a car from them before I kick-the-bucket. Or maybe Chinese.
Our next move is for Linda to test-drive the SX4 to make sure it isn’t a submarine to her. It means contacting the vipers at MarketPlace Suzuki on auto-row in deepest-darkest Henrietta. MarketPlace, represented by “Tony,” a tiny balding Italian, advertises all-the-time on local TV.
There are only two Suzuki-dealers in the Rochester market. The other is Irondequoit Suzuki, represented by “Bimbo,” a big balding fat guy. Irondequoit Suzuki is too far away; MarketPlace Suzuki is far enough. (“Bimbo” is rather disgusting.)

“West Bridgewater” south of Boston is where my all-knowing macho brother Jack lives. To him the greatest vehicle on-the-market is the mighty Hummer.

RE: “Why should I back a car in just to keep the rear-door from hitting the garage-door.......” My brother-in-Boston noisily advised this is what I should do to counteract that the side-hinged rear-door on our CR-V hit the garage-door.

“Linda” is my wife.

The “E250” was our 1979 Ford Econoline van; the neatest vehicle we’ve ever owned.

RE: “a few of our older buses.....” For 16&1/2 years I drove transit-bus for Regional Transit Service in Rochester.

The “Faithful Hunda” was our 1989 Honda Civic all-wheel-drive station-wagon. “Hunda” because that was how a bus-driver pronounced “Honda.”

My wife’s 91-year old mother lives in a retirement-community in “the shadow of the mighty De Land water-tower” in De Land, Floridy.

The “Blue Bomb” was the car I learned how to drive in, a navy-blue 1953 Chevrolet Two-Ten two-door sedan with PowerGlide automatic-transmission and tinted-glass.

The “Bucktooth Bathtub” is the nickname for our 2005 Toyota Sienna van; “Bathtub” because it’s white, and like sitting in a bathtub; and “Bucktooth” because it appears to have a bucktooth on the grill.