Check on Pontiac Sunfires. They are sporty-looking.
I kind of think of them as Pontiac’s Cavelier. haha
Anyway, they are on the cheap side, and they are reliable. I bet they also get good gas mileage.
They redid the SunFire. IMO, it’s really nice looking.
OK, ballsy move on my part, weighing in on this discussion in my first posting to the SD boards, but here goes…
From personal experience, I can speak very highly of the Toyota Corollas. My wife and three separate friends all own Corollas, and with the exception of my wife’s, all have over 100,000 miles on them with little-to-no repairs, only routine maintenance. I’ve yet to hear someone speak badly of Toyotas as far as reliability of quality of construction.
Oh, and yesterday one friend’s Corolla just took it in the trunk from a Land Rover at 30 mph, and she walked away without even a strained muscle. That’s one tough car.
That being said, if you want a Corolla but want to save some money, consider the Geo Prizms. Mine just rolled past 130,000 and the only repair has been to the starter. The car is a champ. you could probably pick up a low-milage mid-to-later 90s Prizm for under $5,000.
I also highly recommend Ford Escorts - had a cousin of one for years (Mercury LN-7), and it, too, was a tough car to kill. Took mine with 125,000 miles through the Mojave Desert at mid-day, loaded down with clothes and moving boxes, with a U-Haul carcap on top, too.
kputt: Would I be right in assuming yours is a late model Cavalier, from 1996 or later? I understand that Chevrolet really did an overhaul on the Cavs and they’re much better cars. But for those of us who owned an early-90s Cavalier, the constant electrical and computer system failures left a very expensive bad taste in our mouths towards GM in general…
Of course, YMMV…and good luck with your purchase!
I have a 2003 cavalier. I had some minor problems, but other than that, it’s been great. The minor problems are the usual new car bugs, and new car blues (if you know what I mean.)
how dare you question my buying power! 
97’ prelude - not near 5k, more like 7 or 8k
That’s like another 2 months of work, but still more than I wanted to spend(not more than I am willing to spend though).
I’m not sure if I know a Toyota dealer…going to have to ask around.
Meh. I thought you wanted something that was a little bit exciting. Corrollas may be many thing, but exciting they ain’t.
I’m 2.5 hours South of you. Come test drive my 95 Bonneville AFTER you drive the Hondas and Toys - I bet you will wonder why anybody would want to even ride as a passenger in a Hondah or Toy.
$4K - take it home with you.
caddillacs, expensive to fix? they sure are hella nice…
First of all, you can’t compare a gm product from the 80’s and the 70’s to what they are making now. GM has a bad reputation. However, they are making cars just as good as imports now. Also, Jimmys were known for their problems.
I like the 2003 corrollas myself. I like thier look.
In business school, we studied, on the graduate level, the import quality myth. Basically the Japan busted the US cars on their first attempt at a small car during the time that Americans were buying small due to fuel price/supply. Japan then just kept making apples to oranges comparisons and the only thing they were good at was marketing the myth to the public and most have fallen for it!
have no idea what happened to most of that last post???
I would take the 70’s to 70’s and 80’s to 80’s test - JUST LOOK AT WHAT IS STILL ON THE ROAD! - except for thesmall cars.
On the GM quality issue, I have a 93 firebird with 220,000 miles on it. I still use to commute 120 miles round trip. Its never left me stranded, and total repair bills over 10 years (excluding tires, brakes and such) have been less than $1000.
I also have a 2001 impala with 85,000 miles on it. So far I’ve replaced the transmission and the catalytic converter. The real kick in the ass was that when the catalytic converter went out at 80100 the dealership refused to cover it under warranty (the warranty on cats goes to 80k). They wanted about $900 for a new one since no after market kits were available. I had one fabricated for about $120 installed…
The end of this story is that I will never buy another GM, not because of the costly repairs in the Impala, but because I feel GM totally screwed us on the cat warranty. It had definitely failed before 80k, I just hadn’t made it to the shop yet. Not to mention the fact that I had just spent 3 grand in repairs a few weeks earlier.
Just so you know it was a combination of the local dealership and corporate GM customer service that denied the cat coverage.
Other than that, I really love the Impala.
Oh, and I bought both cars new…
Every car company has lemons. That seems strange that they would cheat you on the warranty by 100 miles. My dealership might have been more nice. But I imagine that any car company in the world would have done the same thing.
Cadillacs can be expensive to fix, or they can be cheap. Some things on them cost about as much as a Chevy part, some much more. I had to replace some of my fuel injectors on my 1990 Deville: $250 per, and there are eight of them. My 1968 Eldo is expensive to fix simply because it’s a very specialized market. I would say, on average, that a Cadillac is about 30 percent more expensive than a Chevy to fix. Probably about the same, to a little cheaper, than a Japanese car.