I second the GC. Durango possible for bare bones one but they lease worse than GC. You will need some drive offs upfront though.
I understand the argument and how she would win out 
, working in the minivans favor for us was all my children are teens now, so 3 row crossovers really didn’t exist when we got out 1st minivan. Plus 3 children in 4 years, made the 3rd row mandatory.
She threatened to cancel bingo night? Unacceptable
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That’s a good suggestion. The storage space is the real issue for many. My wife ended up leasing an MDX, not for the third row but we simply needed more space behind the second row than anything but the Murano or edge could provide. We had a horrible Nissan dealer experience and she didn’t want a Ford.
Yeah, I agree. Split fold down 3rd row was the game changer for storage as only one half of our 3rd rows are ever up at a time and we have been out of the stroller stage for quite awhile. If you think strollers take up space, wait until you have to haul around 3 travel baseball players at same time…
After reading all this the Traverse seems the only option regardless of cost. With one still in the carrier and the oldest graduating to highback booster half way through the lease the captains chairs work nicely. We have one in the family already and know its capabilities and limitiations
Bring her and two car seats to attest drives, if she still want a CUV afterward, yeah, happy wife happy life. But there is a chance she may change her mind once seeing the situation
We are just about to come out of a 3-year lease on a 2016 Santa Fe. It’s been a great car. Sale prices seem quite a bit lower than the residual. So there are 2016 Santa Fe’s out there with less than 30k miles for under 20k. Came from a Honda Pilot and the Santa Fe has been every bit as good or better over last three years. Just throwing it out there as a value/purchase option.
I have the MDX as well. You are right, storage is good on 3rd row mid size SUV’s as long as the 3rd row is not being used. The problem I have with anything bigger than midsize is the way they handle plus the mpg.
absolutely no chance of changing her mind. She just has no interest in them, let alone wanting to take a test drive. She looked at a Town and Country at the car show briefly, and said “blah.” To each their own.
Yeah some people here seen to have different types of wife’s than you and I. We have started selecting minivans often off the emerald aisle through National since I do most of the driving when we rent together.
@mani_is_kool - I agree with both the size and mpg issue. MDX struggles to get 20 mpg in mixed driving for us and drives/handles fairly big. For city driving i much prefer my Civic and am debabeting how much if any bigger I want my next sedan to be.
Wait for Subaru Ascent.
My wife refused Minivan also.
She drives 3 row SUV only. She had Ford Expedition before, then currently GX460, both of them do not have good MPG. I plan to change to Subaru Ascent soon.
This is definitely same as my experience as well with a QX60. Full size cross over tent to have lower visibility, making tight space (parking lot) maneuver harder. Luckily, I think QX60 has an excellent 360 camera coverage & sonar and conservative auto braking system. This type of features are definitely good to have. MPG in my QX is so far at 16MPG, 95% city driving commute (6 miles) by wife, the worst so far amongst all the cars we have ever have, including a BMW 1M. I don’t know how 20MPG with mixed driving.
Space wise, it is quite good with 3rd row folded. with 1 rear facing carrier seat in outboard 2nd row, I can still fit 2 average size people there quite comfortably. 2nd row knee/leg room is ample. All in all, it should be able to take 4 adult + 1 infant + luggages for a weekend trip comfortably. However with 3rd row up, it will just barely fit two Costco paper towel pack in trunk. 3rd row for sure will not fit the infant carrier seat.
Captains chairs in the 2nd row can mitigate that problem. Also, on my Acadia on the passengers side the 2nd row seat will flip completely forward with a car seat installed (front facing at least, haven’t tested rear since I don’t use it like that anymore).[quote=“joeblogs, post:8, topic:43334”]
And good luck accessing that third row with car seats in the way or installing a car seat or putting a kid in that car seat in the third row.
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How does captain chair help? I can’t visualize it.
Well they allow passage to the back of the suv without having to flip seats in the first place. Should have clarified that.
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Went today to look at a Traverse. Yikes. A selling price of just over 36k with 10k/36 and 500 out of pocket and they wanted almost 500/mo. I just walked out. thats crazy.
Check out the Enclave. Same space, better interior quality. Ofcourse discounts and pricing also better.
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My first trip in our QX60 and I got the mpg up to 27mpg on the 300 mile trip from MD to NC in ECO mode. Initial leg was a max of 25mpg, I filled up halfway through the trip, reset the counter and hit a high of 27 and finished at 26.3 when I pulled into driveway. Most of trip was at 75-80 mph with the AC on.
The QX60 is the default SUV lots of people mention in every SUV thread even when the OP wants a small SUV. But this is one of the times it’s actually the right size. Definitely look at QX60, should be cheaper than traverse.