There are a lot of perks to owning a small car. They get fantastic gas mileage, for one thing. I would much rather drive my little car on long distance road trips because of all the gas I save, because trust me, I hate spending money. In that same vein, they are a lot cheaper to buy! Hooray for a low note! Small cars are also easy to maneuver and can fit into small parking spaces and make tight turns with no issue. Really, there are a lot of reasons to love driving a small car.
However, I have learned that there are a few really good reasons to spend a bit more money upfront and get a bigger vehicle. Moving from Louisiana to Tennessee has been full of learning experiences and one of the earliest ones was about how to drive in snow. If you aren't from a place where this weird white fluff occasionally falls from the sky, I will let you in on a little secret- it's not nearly as awesome as it looks. It's great for sledding and snowmen, but it is MISERABLE to drive in.
Small cars like my little Chevy Cobalt simply don't get enough traction on the road to make driving a fun task when there are snowy and icy roads. Big trucks with powerful tires and four-wheel-drive can make it through these slick conditions, getting you to work, the store or wherever else you need to go without much trouble, but little cars just don't do the trick. You will skid and slide, especially anytime you are trying to drive up anything remotely hilly. It is not a pretty--nor safe-- sight. You will probably miss a few days of work, and those missed paychecks will hurt you just like higher gas mileage and higher notes do. If nothing else, you will be driving around with the non-clumping kitty litter in your car all winter.
Another money sink is going to be car repairs. I learned a hard lesson this week in why a bigger vehicle will save you money. You see, on Thursday, the alternator on my car decided to go kaput. I'm a pretty handy person and like to try to do things myself when I can, so I looked up youtube videos, talked to some friends and went to Autozone to pick up a new one. With confidence, I returned home in the cold and early dark and said we were going to do it.
For a while, it went really well. We were able to get all of the covers and hoses out of the way, take off the front passenger tire and remove the necessary panels to get all of the access we needed. We could reach the alternator with our hands and tools! We were going to do it!
But then, when it came time to remove the fan belt, there was no tool that would fit in to reach the tension belt. The space was simply too small. Extensions weren't long enough, wrenches were too long and hands couldn't get enough grip. It wasn't going anywhere without specialized tools. We were forced to put all of our hard disassembly work back together and admit defeat.
A nearly $200 visit to the mechanic later (and that's just labor, the part was even more expensive than that!) we had a working car again, but that hard hit of defeat was no fun. Even less fun were the long hours we spent outside in the near freezing night, holding flashlights and trying to stay warm while working on the repairs. I owe a huge thanks to Lindsey, Vaughn, and Dustin for their part in ALMOST making our alternator repair a success story.
I suppose the moral of the story is that any vehicle is going to end up putting you out money at one time or another. Driving a small car comes with just as may difficulties as their bigger brethren, so make an informed choice the next time you purchase a vehicle. If you don't mind paying a mechanic bill and don't have snow, feel free to drive all the little cars that you like, especially in big cities with limited parking, but if you like to do things for yourself and get out in all weather conditions, perhaps a bigger vehicle would be a better choice for you.
