"How well do you like that car?" the lady in pink asked me, motioning to the SUV.

I had just finished changing a diaper on the tailgate and was about to put the baby into his car seat. I approached her to answer because I'm hard of hearing and don't like to yell in public.

"Something to consider is the cost of maintance," I warned her. "It's an expensive car to maintain." She hadn't thought of that but said she was in the market for a new car to accommodate her growing family.

"What other cars are you looking at?" I asked and she admitted that she hadn't looked at any yet. "Well, we looked at the Honda Odyssey and the Toyota Sienna. My husband really wanted me to get a minivan but I wanted an SUV." She said that her husband is also pushing a minivan but she cannot see herself driving a minivan. Her Pacifica was a company car.

I told her I preferred the seating configuration in the SUV, with three seats in the second row and two seats in the third row. Minivans usually have two seats in the second row and three seats in the third row so I would always need to keep at least one seat up in the third row no matter what. The big difference, and this is a problem in our narrow garage and in narrow parking spaces, is the real four-doors of the SUV, doors which can be quite heavy, verses the automatic sliding doors on a minivan. There's also the height factor, an SUV is taller and harder to climb into. The lady in pink liked the idea of the minivan's automatic sliding doors. I think that automatic anything is just another feature that can go wrong and require repair.

But the last thing I forgot to mention to her: she must be comfortable with everyone driving the same car. Because, well, I see about a dozen Jaguars a day, but after that, I see mostly shades of my car going around town. It gets tiresome after a while.