Car-spotting thread

so this finally happened yesterday....

2025 Honda Pilot - Elite Trim. We stepped down from the "Black edition" trim which was the one we drove, once I understood that its only a $2500 appearance package and it only comes in Black, white or that sharkskin grey color *correction comes in red too but impossible to find*. But they both have all the same features otherwise which is still more than the lower level Odyssey EX-L we turned in.

Wife and I really tried hard to try as many other options as possible. The cliffnotes version:
  • Hyundai Palisade - nice but felt cheaply made and we didnt like the design much. makes sense since its the "lower" brand compared to Kia
  • Subaru Ascent - we saw one and didnt even drive it - too small inside and she didnt like the drivers layout
  • Mazda CX90 - what an awesome driving SUV with great features and +10 more HP than some others. Too bad its not made for anyone my height at 6'1" the center console design was digging into the side of my leg.
  • Toyota Grand Highlander (Platinum trim) - wow this was super nice with great features but OMG this thing could not get out of its own way with that little 2.4L Turbo 4 cylinder. She also said it just felt just a bit too big with not great sightlines.
  • Kia Telluride - this was nearly the winner it drove great with more HP than the Pilot. but for whatever reason, the 3 dealerships I tried to actually make a deal (2 local, one remote) pretty much ignored all my requests for a detailed breakdown of the lease costs and kept sending me just a monthly payment amount. If we actually found one with the options she wanted we would have 100% got it.
This is the first time since 2002 we havent had a version of the Honda Odyssey in my garage (if youre counting that's 8 different ones). I pretty much knew from the start of this 1.5 month long adventure that this was going to be the outcome. I got a good enough deal (5200 off MSRP, and they took off the $730 charge for the all weather mat package) plus I am a repeat customer, and I negotiated an extra 3000 more on the lease turn in value than they originally offered and used all the equity to get the lease costs down, plus dropped down to 10K Miles/36 months since we turned the van in with only 26K miles on a 3 year/36K mile lease.

Next up - college bound son's car replacement im done dumping money into his 2006 Hyundai Azera he will need something more reliable at school.


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Carson said:
Thank you for not buying white, black, or dark gray! The Pilots are really nice.
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yeah we both done like the color white or black for our cars, though she surprised me when we were considering the Black edition trim in white she said she didnt mind it.

but Red is her #1 color and that specific one is darker/metallic so we like it vs. bright fire engine red.
 
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