I bought a new Matrix because all the car web sites seemed to agree that it had the lowest cost of buying/ownership for the first 5 years among small wagons.
I also calculated that it was actually cheaper to buy it new than used. Using the online Kelly Blue Book, I discovered that a new Matrix was actually cheaper per remaining mile (say, 300K) than a used one (300K - used miles). The things were APPreciating, not depreciating. The car is good enough that my only complaints are that the electrical socket only has two plugs, not three, and that there’s no mp3 player jack for the stereo.
The Matrix is really a Corolla, if you don’t want a wagon. It may even be assembled in America. Mine was.
Edit: Concerning the salesmen, I kind of end runn-ed them. I got Edmunds.com to send my emai to dealers, and when one of them finally had what I wanted, I found using Edmunds that I should have expected to pay even more (no, not sticker, their “real world pricing” or whatever). So I just bought it from there. I may have been able to hammer them down some more, maybe, but I would have about had hives, and I knew I wasn’t being a total sucker this way.