Bryan and I are thinking about downsizing our auto fleet.

We have a honking big, beautiful red pickup truck – a Ford F150 Crew Cab off road 4×4. We got it so we’d have something that we could use to tow our boat (and boat trailer) with. It’s not a daily driver, it’s a secondary vehicle, but with the price of gas filling it up can run $90 or so.

We’ve never once towed our boat, or boat trailer, in 18 months of boat ownership, although we’re paying $60/mo to store the doggone trailer. We moor the boat in Brownsville. We have a mechanic that works on it in the water. We have family that can clean up the bottom, outdrive and engine while it’s still in the water. And if we really need it, Miller Bay or other area marinas can haul it out and and work on it dry.

Sure, a truck is handy for hauling, but we’ve never really hauled anything in it we couldn’t tote around in our minivan. It’s just a needless and rather spendy luxury at this point.

I’ve been looking at econocars online. My bro-in-law – he’s a serious commuter – just bought a little tiny red Toyota Yaris. I haven’t seen his Yaris, but I’ve had roller skate cars before (a Ford Festiva and Escort, a Chevy Chevette) and gotten tired of them, they can be just a little too bare bones and flimsy. Somwhere, there has to be that balance between economy and features, and practicality and appeal.

My mom bought a Toyota Prius. It’s really cute, and gets amazing mileage. The model is a tad too small for me, and they are quite spendy.

I’ve rented a Toyota Matrix a couple of times on business trips. It’s been pretty comfortable, a step up from the Yaris in headroom, size and feature set. It’s still inexpensive, and gets fabulous mileage, but seems like a good little car.

Believe it or not, I’m not married to a Toyota. It’s just an odd trend for my family. I do need a hard-to-find balance between a small, compact, high-gas-mileage car, but have adequate leg and headroom. Toyota does pretty well there. I drove a Dodge Caliber on another recent business trip and it was horribly undersized and uncomfortable – I had to wrench my neck sideways every time to fit through the door into the seat.

We probably won’t actually go car shopping until July, but it’s been fun looking around online.