I Need A City Car To Pair With Our SUV! What Should I Buy?

Brant is moving and will have enough room for two cars. He is looking for a small city commuter car for around-town driving that would pair with a Telluride. It needs to be able to handle two kids comfortably, but also cheap and easy to park. With a budget of around ten grand, what car should he buy?

(Welcome back to What Car Should You Buy? Where we give real people real advice about buying cars. Do you want us to help you find a car? Submit your story on our form.)

Here is the scenario.

My family is moving from Dumbo, Brooklyn to Red Hook, Brooklyn and need a small second car for taking the kids (7 and 5 yo) to school in Brooklyn Heights, running occasional errands, and a rare commute into midtown. We already have a Telluride (which we love), so we don’t need something for road trips, highway driving, or moving large loads. Really, we’re looking for something a little fun (but still practical), easy to park, will hold a booster seat and a car seat, and that we can sell in a year or two without a big loss. Amazingly, our new place has its own garage – but it’s small! Our Telluride is about 2 inches too long (but as tall as we want – it’s an old commercial garage I think). So we can leave it in the garage most of the time, and park the Telluride on the street. HEre is the thing, we don’t want to spend a lot of money…thinking like ten grand max. And no mammals, I don’t want to deal with a clutch in the city.

Quick Facts:

Budget: $10,000

Location: Brooklyn, New York

Daily Driver: Yes

Wants: Small, easy to park, comfortable for two kids

Doesn’t want: Something giant

So let’s get something out of the way, if your budget is around $10,000, you don’t have to worry about “losing value” too much as those cars are already at the end of their depreciation curves, so any further value loss over a year or two will be minimal. That being said, finding a quality car at this price point will be a challenge, especially in the city. Filtering through the listings to find something that isn’t a complete basket case will be a time-consuming process.

My suggestion is to pivot to the EV space since you can score something a little newer, with more reasonable mileage, for cheap. Since you have a garage, I would imagine you can add a charger, and since this is a car for short trips, it is the ideal use case for an electric. The big hiccup with finding inexpensive EVs is that so many have advertised prices that already bake in the $4,000 used vehicle tax credit, so it is critical that you examine the details of the ad if something looks too good to be true. However, this 2016 Kia Soul EV for under $8,000 doesn’t list any caveats. It only has 93 miles of range, which isn’t awesome compared to more modern electrics, but with only 56,000 miles, it would be a cheap and zippy runabout. Like its gas-powered version, the Soul is a spacious compact that can easily fit two kids in the back and slots into parking spots with not problem.

Next time you’re wandering the streets of your new home, take a look around you. On every block, street-parked outside seemingly every building, there’s one vehicle that links the trendy bits of Red Hook together: The Triumph Bonneville. Sure, the neighborhood has its fair share of vintage Hondas and modern Tenere 700s, but the Bonneville is the true vehicle of Red Hook. Williamsburg gets the Thruxton. 

I’ve found you not one, but two local Bonnevilles that can be had — together — for less than your $10,000 budget. That’s one per parent-kid combo, meaning you’ll get to ride together over those long, harsh two miles between you and Brooklyn Heights. Adults at the controls, kids on the back, it’s a setup that only works in the low-speed, high-visibility driving situations of urban centers. Sure, you could just take the bus, but why do that when there are motorcycles to be had?

Now, you did say that a clutch was a dealbreaker. I’m hoping that that’s only referring to a foot-operated clutch, but if you really don’t want to operate one with your left hand then I have a solution for you: The Honda Rebel 1100 DCT, like this example that even comes with a backrest for the kids. At $8,000, you’ll only get one within your budget, but maybe you can get a bulk rate.

Red Hook may be New York’s worst transit desert — there are only two real bus options between you and Brooklyn Heights — but a motorcycle cures all of that. Get yourself a pair of Bonnevilles, and fit right in to your new neighborhood. I have it on good authority that five years old is a perfectly fine time to start riding pillion.

You already have a massive SUV in one of the most densely packed cities in America, so what you really need is the opposite of that. Something lively and nimble for your extremely short school run, and fun enough that you’ll want to use it to run and grab groceries or whatever. The real answer to your conundrum is a lightly used electric Italian scooter, the delightful and cheery Vespa Elettrica.

Your already small garage will thank you for not jamming a full-sized vehicle in it, and the Vespa will easily charge overnight so you can put your five-ish mile commute to bed without any kind of range anxiety. These little 6-horsepower scoots go about 60 miles on a full charge and top up from flat in about four hours. Here’s one just a short drive away from the city in Albany for $4,999, and it seems unlikely you’ll lose much on this if you decide to sell it, but it’s cheap enough you can keep it for your kids to ride around the city solo when they’re old enough. With a low seat height and lots of legroom, you’ll have no problem getting your kids to school and picking up an espresso on the way home. Ciao!

Well, my initial reaction was that you should just throw your kids on a bus or train and skip this whole “buying a car just to take your kids to school two miles away” thing, but our resident New Yorkers have since informed me that Red Hook is one of the few parts of Brooklyn where transit is so bad, you probably actually do need something else. And right now, I’m hearing e-bikes. Your kids will love them, exercise is good for you, the family can bond and you can splash out on multiple bikes with all the accessories you might possibly need for less than $10,000.Since this is America, though, you probably won’t do that, even if, objectively, it’s the correct thing to do. 

So now I have to find a car that will do the work of the e-bikes you probably won’t buy. Tom’s probably right about the Kia, but since we can’t recommend the same car multiple times, how about we think smaller and go with the old Fiat 500e? The range isn’t great, but you aren’t going to drive it more than 20 miles round trip anyway, so who cares? Even in winter, you’ll be fine. And it’s cute, which is always fun. Plus, my oldest niece and nephew are a little older than your kids, and they fit in my blue one, so I can’t imagine your kids will have any issues. 

Here’s one close enough to you that you could probably drive it home without charging, and it also costs less than $10k while coming in a real color. The driver’s seat looks fairly worn, but you’re the one who turned down my e-bike suggestion. This is also assuming there’s a power outlet somewhere in that garage you’re currently parking the Telluride in. If there isn’t, you could still make it work, but it would be a little more complicated since old 500es don’t exactly do fast charging. The e-bikes would still work, though. You can just charge those batteries inside.