Well the wife has decided that she wants to go back to working part time, and I'm fine with it, she is happier working part time, and when she is happier I am happier. So in an effort to lower our monthly expenses some we have decided to sell her baby, a 97 4Runner.

It will be replaced by a car in the 10k range. I was hoping yall would have some suggestions, ones to look at or stay way away from... She wants something fairly small, four doors, a manual, and somewhat fun to drive. And she would prefer rear wheel drive. Are there any that are rear drive? I can't do a real burnout with front wheel drive.

Oh yeah, it has to look good with 300 stickers, and a huge wing mounted to the trunk.

 

My wife has a Saturn for a grocery getter. Gets 36 mpg consistantly and 38-40 if we baby it. yeah, it's front wheel drive, but it is reliable. It's an 02 and we have 75,000+ miles and have only replaced the tires, oil changes every 5,000.

 

Never even thought about the Saturns. I'm into trucks (would you have guessed?) She has driven SUV's since I've known her... As do pretty much all of our freinds. We'll have to take a look at them.

 

One of my friends has a saturn, when he complained about oil burn, the service department said its common and usually happens in the 100K range.
He was looking at trading it for another one for his wife (who drives about 1/3 as much as he does) and the sales man was telling him how the new cars have the exact same engine, just a bit more displacement. My friend asked the salesman if this engine has the same quirk the old one had. The salesman replied that he thought it would since the engines were EXACTLY the same. So my friend told him about the rings wearing out by 100,000 miles. The sales man told my friend that this wouldn't happen, the engine has been completely redesigned, its a totally different engine.

My friend is now looking at a diesel Jetta.

 

Guy I work with has a Diesel Jetta and he loves it. 40 - 50 mpg although a little gutless. A manual tranny would probably help that. BTW, when he needs to haul something guess who gets the call.

 

You can get a Chevy Malibu for $10K that's about 1 year old. I almost bought one, couldn't make a deal on my trade in though. Impalas are nice, not sure if its rwd. I have a few friends that have had saturns. They start burning oil about 100K miles...

 

The RWD would be nice but not necessary, just a prefrence.

And thanks for giving us a few more to look at, she is kind of loking the Mazdas... Guess we will have to look at the GMs too.

 

Okay this may put me in the line of fire a bit, but here goes:

I drove a friends' '98 BMW M3 sedan back to Illinois form South Carolina recently. This 5-speed, RWD, stock M-car returned 29.5 to 30.9 mpg on the road trip, and about 24mpg around town. Not to mention excellent handeling, braking, acceleration, and on and on. Only thing I didn't like was the amount of attention such a car brings. The Non- M models are a bit better in this respect. They do require maintance, and it will cost a bit when that happens. But drive one, for the simple pleasure of it. They are a solid, very durable German car that make a great daily drive - that make you start making up excuses to go drive it more.

 

My wifes Saturn has around 75k now and goes 4000 miles on an oil change and is still above add oil. Hope it stays that way.