I have a '23 Soul and I have a commute of ~35 miles each way: 20 miles of freeway, 10 miles of windy mountain road, and 5 miles of stop-and-go downtown city traffic. I average about 35mpg on that drive. Better than the XB or Cube ever had.
Kia did away with that color scheme a few years ago. The pillars have black cladding but the roof is matched to the body.
A big question is do you want a disposable car or one you will keep well after it is paid off? If the latter, then I would say to bump up your budget to $30K and look at entry level Toyotas, Hondas, Mazdas, etc.
A few years ago I fractured my elbow and couldn’t drive for a while because I couldn’t shift gears. I decided then that this was the last manual I’d drive. Plus I have arthritis in the knee of my clutch leg. An automatic will make more sense as I get older. The less work the arms and legs have to do the better. 
And yet the power, amenities, safety and longevity of a new cheap car will be orders of magnitude better than those old cheap cars.
Very true.
Slowest current cars The comments are gold. Old cars sucked!
Yes. As seen here:
Slowest in my link is a 1954 VW bug, which I believe.
Second slowest is a 1961 Corvair. Makes sense given the title of Ralph Nader’s famed auto safety book slamming the Corvair, Unsafe at Any Speed.
As a previous owner of a plenty zippy 62 Vair, I had to look at that list. Might be worth mentioning that the slow 61 Vair was a van. (And a pretty neat vehicle at that - which no one ever bought for speed.)
And, it is a little unfortunate that folk need to be reminded that Corvairs were no less safe than any other cars of the period, and that the purported rollover evidence in UAAS was bullshit.
Nitpick: The Corvair was merely one chapter. He slammed a lot of other cars in that book, too. The Corvair is just the one everyone remembers.
Which really was Nader’s point. I don’t think he actually said the Corvair was significantly less safe than other cars; his point was that all cars were pretty unsafe back then and that automakers should work on improving that situation. He just used the Corvair as one example.
In fact, I’m in the same boat right now. I broke my right elbow 5 1/2 weeks ago (and had surgery to repair it four weeks ago). I’m barred from driving my stick-shift Mustang for another 2 to 4 weeks, while I continue physical therapy.
Hell, I was able to buy a (used) car in 2004 for just $500. A 1991 Nissan Stanza. Used it for a year while saving up for a Mazda 3, and sold it for $250. Car treated me just fine. I did have to buy and install a new alternator at some point.
I remember recently watching the movie Ford vs Ferrari, in part about the development of the Ford GT. I remember a scene in which a Ford executive talked about needing a car to sell to kids in their early 20s. (This was in 1963 when the first baby boomers were turning eighteen.) I marveled at the idea that an auto company was marketing a new car to kids that young.
I understand that very well. Comments such as the one I responded to impress me as not so much.
I never thought that a Corvair owner might read my post!
However, with apologies for being defensive, I deliberately did not say that Nader only slammed the Corvair, nor did I endorse the criticism.
Where I went wrong: I should have specified that the allegedly underpowered 1961 Corvair was just the Greenbrier van.