I signed up for an intermediate, but the guy at the rental counter looked at me and asked I wanted a Sienna. I'm 6'7" 320 so I was like uh yeahhhh...
Checked out in San Diego, returned in Oakland (that's another story...), a little over 7 days. Sienna LE Hybrid, NY plates, about 50K miles. Swallowed our excessive luggage in the back no problem. Averaged around 35mpg overall, hand calculated. Good room for the (very tall) driver. Smooth highway cruiser. Less body lean than I was expecting, but then again my daily is an old Lincoln Navigator which has all the body leans. Pretty quiet for the most part but the 4 cylinder got a little thrashy when pushed hard. On the other hand it had no problems going up steep grades at 70mph, which was a concern of mine. Hard to keep it in EV mode on acceleration much past 20-25 despite my efforts. Mileage starts creeping up in traffic which is great. Adaptive cruise was the best that I have tried, will brake hard from 75MPH to a stop if necessary. All you have to do is steer. I did lower the sensitivity every time I turned on the criuse though to 1 bar, if you leave it on 3 bars you'll never get anywhere in city traffic as it will keep 100 yards between you and the car in front of you. Infotainment system is not the most intuitive but I almost exclusively used Android Auto while I was driving for navigation and music. Good sound quality after some adjustments, think it had a subwoofer because there was some booming on some pop songs we played.
Really liked this vehicle, and I don't have the aversion to the 'minivan image' that drive some people to buy large SUVs. I personally don't care. But I shopped them when I got home and starts at 45K and basically none available other than the high trim models. I think I'll keep my Navi for a while longer, it gets about 15mpg but it's paid off. I'm one of those people who doesn't really like putting money into depreciating assets. If you don't mind paying what they cost and don't care about the image issues, then I thought it was a good vehicle that will probably last a long time. Our rental had 50K miles but didn't feel like it except for maybe a bit of vibration from the cheap china tires that Budget had put on it as OEM replacements. Overall I would recommend it, just wish it was about 10K less expensive.
Checked out in San Diego, returned in Oakland (that's another story...), a little over 7 days. Sienna LE Hybrid, NY plates, about 50K miles. Swallowed our excessive luggage in the back no problem. Averaged around 35mpg overall, hand calculated. Good room for the (very tall) driver. Smooth highway cruiser. Less body lean than I was expecting, but then again my daily is an old Lincoln Navigator which has all the body leans. Pretty quiet for the most part but the 4 cylinder got a little thrashy when pushed hard. On the other hand it had no problems going up steep grades at 70mph, which was a concern of mine. Hard to keep it in EV mode on acceleration much past 20-25 despite my efforts. Mileage starts creeping up in traffic which is great. Adaptive cruise was the best that I have tried, will brake hard from 75MPH to a stop if necessary. All you have to do is steer. I did lower the sensitivity every time I turned on the criuse though to 1 bar, if you leave it on 3 bars you'll never get anywhere in city traffic as it will keep 100 yards between you and the car in front of you. Infotainment system is not the most intuitive but I almost exclusively used Android Auto while I was driving for navigation and music. Good sound quality after some adjustments, think it had a subwoofer because there was some booming on some pop songs we played.
Really liked this vehicle, and I don't have the aversion to the 'minivan image' that drive some people to buy large SUVs. I personally don't care. But I shopped them when I got home and starts at 45K and basically none available other than the high trim models. I think I'll keep my Navi for a while longer, it gets about 15mpg but it's paid off. I'm one of those people who doesn't really like putting money into depreciating assets. If you don't mind paying what they cost and don't care about the image issues, then I thought it was a good vehicle that will probably last a long time. Our rental had 50K miles but didn't feel like it except for maybe a bit of vibration from the cheap china tires that Budget had put on it as OEM replacements. Overall I would recommend it, just wish it was about 10K less expensive.