Subaru Forester. My dad is 80 and he feels much more comfortable driving his Subaru Legacy than his Toyota SUV because of all the safety features the Subie has. It helps him be alert when his own reaction time is slowing down a bit. He told me today that he wants to trade the highlander in for a Forester or Ascent so that he can have the same Tech as the legacy (Lane assist, blind spot detection, Eyesight, etc.) All those nannies work together very cleanly to make driving easier for an older person.

quote:

Originally posted by 12131:
Toyota RAV4

this was going to be my answer.

We have one - its my daily driver since we got my wife the Sienna. ours is a 2008. it had about 90k miles when we got it from a dealership for $12k a cuople years ago.

it's not the smoothest ride - the Sienna is smoother. the new tires we put on the Rav are pretty quiet though. the newer Ravs are even nicer, too.

you said Jeeb Liberty; while I don't have extended experience, I spent a bit of time in one of those on a job and found it to be pretty uncomfortable.

quote:

Originally posted by 12131:
Toyota RAV4

I second the RAV 4, you can't beat Toyota quality and you should be able to purchase a used one a few years old with low mileage for 17k. www.cargurus.com is a decent site to find used cars along with a few others.

I just bought a Nissan Juke with AWD this past March for Tabitha and she LOVES it.

It was a pre-owned car and I gave only $12,000 for it.

Might be hard to get a brand new AWD in the 17K range. We shopped around for a new AWD small SUV or hatch back few months ago and can’t find anything sub 20K. You can check a used, newer model one with low mileage and still have factory warranty for around your price range. CarMax have a no haggle price stickers. Meaning whatever the sticker price is, that is the lowest they will sell it for. Try walking around their lot if one is nearby your location.

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:
The Honda CR-V had been pretty consistently a good value for years. Hard to go wrong with that one, I should think.

My wife's CRV is 9 years old now and has never had a problem.

For the first 6 years we had the car we were in the Northeast with snowy winters. Its got AWD. It's great in the snow. It'll be fine so long as there are halfway decent tires on it.

Update-

Thanks to all the suggestions. We went out yesterday looking high and low for a CRV, Rav-4, Forester and the like.

All the models in our price range were sold or high mileage and the loan rates were too high (10%) for our comfort level.

We ended up looking at a few Nissan Rogues, a 2016, 2017 and 2018. They were all rental fleet vehicles and we settled on a 2017 Rogue, fully loaded with 15k miles, backup cameras, blind spot sensors, bluetooth and AWD. It even had an ECO and Sport setting button. She financed the remaining $16k after money down for 60 months at ~4%. She's got 2 years left on her factory warranty and they gave us a great deal on an additional 6 year 72k mile warranty/oil changes since the dealership processed the loan with our existing credit union. It was only about $25 a month more on top of the loan payment.

She's 77 years old and the car and warranty should see her through the remainder of her driving years (sad for me to say that). Oh, and a side note; this is the first car she's ever purchased on her own. She's never gone through the car shopping/buying experience.

We took it for a test drive and I had her get in and out of the car, test the shifter and all that to verify that it was an ergonomically good fit for her.

We stayed away from the Jeeps/Fords/Chevys. Everyone I talked to said to stick with a Japanese manufacturer so that's what we ended up doing.

In the end, she really loved the Nissans so we went with that. The most stressful part was getting the insurance set up on a Sunday evening.

Tony.