New job and impact of longer commute on cars

[FC]

Originally Posted by lemming

congrats on the new commute. yes!

hope you actually get snow this year. i hate it when it's cold and gray but no snow. then what's the point of winter, really?

Agreed! And thanks!

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After some thinking, there is no question that in retrospect, the better move should have been to buy the GTI instead of the M3, but that decision was made a long time ago and I've enjoyed the M3 for the past two years.

Even my wife agrees that an LR4+GTI+Boxster setup would work well. I'm just not prepared to sell the M3. I fear I will regret selling it in a way I wish I hadn't sold the ZHP. But I could not afford to keep the ZHP then and I can afford to keep the M3 now, so it stays - at least for now. My fear is that keeping it will preclude me from getting a Boxster. It may well come down to one or the other. My wife has trouble accepting 4 cars, especially when I know she will consider the M3 and Boxster both to be my toys.

In the short-term, the tentative plan is to swap the Miata for some kind of MT Golf. I'm assuming I can get a recent, not beat-up version of one these for around $20k or less. I figure the Miata should fetch ~$8k.

1) Vanilla Golf - cheapest to buy and run, good all around car, good hand-me down for kids, but slow. Probably the wisest choice.
2) GTI - More fun, LSD, etc. More expensive to buy and run. Won't feel slow in the hwy.
3) Alltrack - Slower and less fun than even the plain Golf and bigger (I want a practical small car), I assume, but more utility and better traction.

The alltrack would be a move to make my wife happier as I am sure she would love to run errands on this car, but I'm sure she'd be happy with any of them. Personally, I don't think it's that good a move to get an alltrack. But she has a weird obsession with wanting a Subaru and this would be pretty close. I personally naturally lean towards a GTI.

Regardless, I have a few months to figure it out.