Until this post, I haven't written about bike racks in Weekend Athlete, for a couple of reasons. For starters, I'm pretty sure car companies don't want me slapping one of those things on their shiny new paint jobs. Also, I really believe that if you like your bike, you keep it inside the car.
The new model year is upon us, and 2009 is looking like a good year for Weekend Athletes of all stripes. Automakers are coming up with a bunch of cars that hold a lot of promise.
The Journey is a three-row crossover, which isn't normally the type of car I go for. I'm not the week-long athlete, after all, so I don't need so much space all the time. That's not to say, though, that there aren't some nice features for Weekend Athlete to be found in the Journey.
In a pinch, anything with a motor and wheels will get you where you need to go for any outdoor adventure, but we’ll look at a few popular categories and outline what you'll get — and what you won't — from each, based on my experience.
Saturn sponsors a number of races I've participated in, and they've brought this car to a number of them as a promotion. I've really wanted to try it out. It looked like a fun, useful car that would fit my needs. After driving it, it's not all that I'd hoped for, but it's not a dog either.
I've seen the Mazda5 pop up at all my ski and bike races, and after a stint in the new 2008 version I can see why. A lot of cars look practical but really don't deliver. The Mazda5 largely delivers, even though, as always, there are things that could be better.
I took the Patriot out for a test recently, and it didn't score any better than its Dodge cousin, the Caliber. That's a shame, because I'd hoped a Jeep product would skew a little more toward the outdoors enthusiast than a Dodge. Still, it's a wagon-like vehicle and that means it has a few nice touches up its sleeve.
I usually leave the three-row SUVs to the Suburban Dads who need them, but I thought the Commander might be fun. By and large, things worked as well as you’d expect with a large vehicle, but there are a few things Commander-shoppers need to examine before they buy.
It’s finally started to feel like winter here in Chicago, so I finally got to take a car out for a cross-country ski trip. As one would expect, claimed temps of 10 below meant different features were a bit more important now than they had been before.
This is the part of the job that's not so fun: Grading. If the Rogue were a student, it would be the one who tried hard, whom you liked and who did many things right, but just couldn't quite put it all together come test time.
“Friends don’t let friends buy sedans” is how the best bike racer I know sums up his car-shopping approach. He owns a station wagon, so when the 2008 Volvo XC70 came into the fleet, I had to see if he was on to something.
Straight out of the box, the Nissan Xterra tries to be the Weekend Athlete’s best bud. It’s got a storage box above the roof for a wetsuit or other nasty items, but best of all it’s got a wipe-down cargo floor. Past that, of course, it still must pass the compulsory tests.
Carrying camping gear is easy, as it usually is, but for some reason car designers seem fixated on giving you either enough room for four people or enough room for four people’s gear. It seats five, you say? Yeah, it’ll seat five if you and your friends are members of the Lollipop Guild.
Athletes come in many shapes and sizes, and some are just better suited for a particular sport. It’s the same with cars — there are jobs for which some are simply the best. I recently got to spend some time with the Honda Element and rediscovered why it scores a perfect 10 for weekend athletes.
Oh, the poor Scion xD. I took it for a test because two co-workers (who don't ride bikes) guilt-tripped me by saying it would "totally" hold my athlete stuff and I should "totally" drive it. Sadly, it does not measure up.
A van is a wonderful thing for carrying people and things. Your cargo stays dry — unlike in a pickup — and the load floor is usually lower than an SUV's. Combine that with power hatches and doors, and the ingredients are there for a good Weekend Athlete car.
Since the Weekend Athlete reviews differ from our other reviews, it's probably worth explaining how I come up with the ratings I do.
To that end, here are the categories, what they mean and how a car gets its score:
Ease of loading gear: What I'm looking for here is something I can chuck all my toys into without having to think such thoughts as “Hmm … perhaps if the cooler were placed here, then the sleeping bag could go here.” Also, there needs to be enough room to carry everything without a lot of piling, stacking and mashing of gear. The easier things fit in, the higher the score.
Ease of seat operation: Cars that score the best are ones where the seats fold down and up quickly and easily. Picture yourself wearing a backpack, balancing a bike and holding a coffee mug while you load your car in the rain, and you can see why the ease of seat operation is important.
Bike hauling: Almost everywhere I go, one of my bikes comes along. If the bike can go into the car without me having to remove a wheel, that's great; if I have to take one wheel off, that's average; if I have to take both off, it's poor. The range in the scores is determined not only by how much room there is for the bike, but also how easy it is to load the bike. In other words, is the load floor too low? Or is it too high, especially for shorter people? Is the opening too narrow for the bike to slide in? I use a bike as the example here because it's a fairly common item that people can relate to.
Locker room cred: Does the car look like it can take getting dirty, or does it look like it could use doilies? The more comfortable I feel in the car, the higher its score here. Also, nicer interiors tend to get dinged (sorry, Pontiac Torrent). If you don't sweat, never get muddy and don't camp, go buy a luxury car and have fun — but that's not me. To me, climbing into a luxury car after a muddy race would be like tracking mud into your parents' dining room. I wouldn't do it.
All-around: This is a rough average of the above scores. The car's price could factor in here, though, as well as in the locker room category. Why? Because I believe that doing beats having, so given the choice between $1,000 in options and $1,000 in race-entry fees, I'll go for the latter. I'll always call this out, just in case you're one of those people who doesn’t have to worry about dropping $1,000 either way.
I try to only test cars that I think will perform well, so you won't see me taking out a Mazda MX-5 just so I can say it’s a bad Weekend Athlete car. Finally, I'm not out to dump on anybody's car. I started this because I got tired of press releases and car reviews talking about how many golf bags a car would hold, both because I don't golf and because golf bags don’t only come in one standard size. But I do ride bikes, camp, cross-country ski, etc., and I want to know if a particular car will fit that lifestyle.
I hope that through the pictures, videos and writing, these reviews will help active people get a better idea of whether a car should be on their shopping list. As always, feel free to ping me with your thoughts.
I loaded up the new Ford Taurus X for Weekend Athlete duty, drove it, unloaded it and played with its features. It was nice, but I left knowing it wasn't something I'd buy.
It was the largest vehicle I'd tested up to this point, so there was enough room to put my bike in without removing the wheel. It's also the first vehicle since the Honda Element that held all my gear and my bike without taking the wheel off. If you plan on carrying a lot of stuff, don't get the optional center console in the second row — doing so eliminates a nice storage cubby.
Several years ago, I took the previous-generation Outlander on a racing and riding vacation and found it OK, but not outstanding. Well, the more things change, the more they stay the same; the new generation didn't blow me away, but it also didn't greatly disappoint me.
Loading things was a little tricky because the opening didn't seem that wide. I felt like I was reaching around a corner to load things, and I really had to angle my bike to fit it in. However, it was nice to have a hatch as I had to park in a parallel-parking space. The barn door on the Toyota RAV4 would have been a real pain. In fact, the hatch was easy enough to live with that I never bothered to open the bottom part of the clamshell section.
This is the first three-row SUV I've had where someone had used the third row. There were instructions on the seatbacks describing how to fold those seats, so I didn't have to track down the owner's manual. Nice touch.
While the rest of the staff was out flogging cars around the racetrack last week, I scoured the GM fleet for features that would help my Weekend Athlete brothers and sisters. Turns out GM has some things we'll appreciate.
Cargo tie-down hooks
This is probably my favorite feature. I always want a way to secure a bike wheel or something in the hold, but often have to improvise. The Saturn Outlook and Saab 9-3 Aero SportCombi had the tie-downs already built into the rear cargo area. Now, sure, I'd need to bring my bike and gear to determine if they were put in EXACTLY the right place for me, but I'm just happy someone thought to put them in the cargo area in the first place.
The RAV4 has grown into a larger SUV than it was when it first hit the market, but will bigger mean better in a competitive Weekend Athlete world?
Once you fold the rear seats, the cargo area is flat, which is nice, but not one of the things I add or subtract a lot of points for. What I do care about is how large the cargo area is and the size of the opening through which you must pass your gear. Here the RAV4 scores points because both are large.
Where it loses points is on the seat mechanism and the rear door.
I've seen a lot of Dodge Calibers where I live in Chicago, and I like wagons and hatchbacks, so I was excited to try one out when it came into the Cars.com fleet recently. I ended up a bit disappointed.
For starters, flipping the seats is easy, but when I had the passenger seat set comfortably for me, the rear seat wouldn't flip all the way down. This is common in smaller cars, but it's something you should know if you're shopping Calibers. The cargo opening in the rear was a bit small — again, common on smaller cars, but not the case on, say, the Scion xB.
It held the bike OK, but I couldn't stand the rear wheel up behind the rear seats. The fact that the passenger seat folds completely flat doesn't really help with carrying the bike either. Still, it would make carrying my cross-country skis sinfully easy, so it's a nice feature to have.
As for camping stuff, this is really a two-person car. There's not enough room to carry stuff and four people.
I took the RDX to my favorite triathlon, just over the border in Kenosha, Wis., followed by a weekend of camping at a state park another three hours away, so for once the car and I both got a good workout. The RDX was a nice companion, but not spectacular as a cargo vehicle. It doesn't offer more space or utility than others I've tested, so it's not the new champion, but there are some interesting twists to it.
For starters, someone at the triathlon said it looked fast. It is. Especially with Sport mode engaged, there's enough oomph for passing and maneuvering on the highway. The best part is the whistling of its turbo — I could not get enough of that.
Rating: 9.0 out of 10
I tested the 2008 Subaru Outback L.L.Bean edition using my usual Weekend Athlete race and camping gear, and it earned a very high rating of 9. The downsides are the sticker price — it's more than $30,000, which doesn't leave a lot of cash for s'mores or race fees — and it's a bit sluggish on the highway. Of course, you could forgo the L.L.Bean edition and buy a 2.5i, like someone I know, and save roughly $5,000 — but you'll still have to deal with the highway sluggishness. Either way, in the city or on two-lane roads the L.L.Bean edition is fun to drive and offers good visibility. Watch the video above to see how the Outback earned its ranking.
More Weekend Athlete reviews
The Element and CR-V give Honda two distinct offerings in the small SUV segment. If the Element is the kid you can't keep out of mud puddles, the CR-V is the cleaner, dressier sibling. Still, it does OK in the world of camping and racing despite its clean-cut nature.
The CR-V works best as a camping vehicle. It and the Element remain the only ones I've tested that I believe could easily carry gear for three or four people because there's enough room behind the upright rear seat for the gear.
I've rented the 2007 PT Cruiser several times to take me to races, so I know it well. I like the visibility from the driver's seat, and the seats fold down with a press of a button. A huge plus is the fact that its hatch opens high enough I can easily stand under it without hitting my head. (The last thing you want to have to do after a race is bend or twist to avoid a hatch built to accommodate a pipsqueak.)
An Ironman triathlete I know has the previous-generation xB, so I was excited to see how the redesigned 2008 xB did with my non-Ironman triathlon gear and camping stuff. Verdict: It's pretty darn good.
The xB ties the 2008 Mercury Mariner Hybrid from last week’s test. Its seats are easier to fold, and the cargo area is close to the same size despite the fact that the car itself is tiny.
While the xB carries the camping and racing stuff OK, it did remind me of my old studio apartment: Everything had its place, but you couldn't bring anything new into the mix without it feeling cluttered. There's just not a lot of extra space in the cargo area or driver/passenger compartment once you're loaded up. It'd be a fine two-person camping car, and maybe a third could tag along, but four would be too much.
Until now, I've only tested how my bike fits in new cars, but now that it's racing and camping season, it's time to see how well they can carry the gear used on a typical weekend trip.
I'm no fan of SUVs, but the 2008 Mercury Mariner Hybrid proved to be better than I expected. The rear seats folded down easily once I figured out you had to flip the rear seat bottoms forward. The load floor was just the right height for me (I'm 6-foot-1), and while that's subjective, I don't think shorter people would find it to be too tall.
Our own resident triathlete — and lord of Cars.com’s Buying Guides — Bill Jackson is working on a story about how certain products help weekend warriors live with their vehicles. He took the new 2007 Honda Element SC along for the ride, and this is his reaction to the redesigned Element.
“I've always thought the Element would be perfect for my triathlon, camping and bike-racing adventures, but now that I actually got my hands on one, would it really measure up?
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