One of the first cost we have to account for for our trip is the gasoline cost. For a 6000 mile journey those can add up just by number of miles. Plus we anticipate pretty high per gallon costs this summer as well.
We figured the options are as follows:
- Use the Focus
- Use the Taurus
- Rent a vehicle
- Borrow a vehicle
Option 1
The Focus is pretty small so we don’t think it would be a good fit for the 16 day trip. We wouldn’t be able to carry much stuff and its a tight fit even if its not packed to the gills. It gets very good gas mileage so it does have that going for it. It would be fun to drive on some of those windy California roads however!
Option 2
The Taurus has been the workhorse vehicle for these sorts of things. We’ve driven it to Florida a few times and a loop up to Toronto and back via New York. We think the gas mileage will be fine (in the 26–27 mpg range on the highway). Size wise it’d be a tight fit to get everything in there. I’m not sure the seats would be comfortable enough for 16 days of a ton of driving. Also, for the Grand Canyon portion of the trip the higher the vehicle clearance the better. At 88,000 miles its getting up there and there have been some electrical issues lately (which hopefully will be fixed today!). We think it would work in a pinch but we have some reservations.
Option 3
Option 3 is renting a vehicle. This really opens the door for a lot of different vehicles. I tend to know Ford vehicles so thats what I’m comfortable renting. We decided we’d use a little bit of the vacation budget to try out some candidate vehicles. The downside to the rental option is it obviously costs money to rent a vehicle and the bigger the vehicle the more the rental fees. Allowed miles doesn’t seem to be a problem, apparently unlimited miles means unlimited miles. I’ll cover the evaluations in a later post.
Rented so far:
- 2008 Ford Edge
- 2007 Ford Freestyle
Option 4
Option 4 is borrowing a vehicle. We didn’t go into this trying to bum a vehicle off anyone as we are budgeting enough that a rental would be feasible. My brother offered up an ‘02 Ford Sable with a bit more miles than my Taurus but without the maintenance red flags. My mom has been kind enough to offer her ‘04 Expedition. I’ll post about the evaluation in a later post.
