Sedan Recommendation?

Do you have a maximum limit for age or mileage?

James

 

I'm doing a search to see what is available in the US at that price because it is a lot different here in Canada. We get screwed on car prices in most cases.

2012 Nissan Maxima S 40000 miles

2012 Chevrolet Impala LTZ 29000 miles

2009 Ford Taurus AWD 26000

Those are some that I found. Then you start to get older. But even in the 07 and up you can find some nice Buicks, Mazda 6, Pontiac Grand Prix, and the Chrysler 300. I even found a 06 Cadillac STS with 46000 (It would be tempting to me. I would just start to wonder about age.

To get the imports like Honda and Toyota at that price and under $10000 you have to go down to about 2003-2004.

As far as reliability goes, I don't put too much weight in that myself. It matters but there are no guarantees. New or used, they all can and will break. Some just more then others. But even the most reliable cars has owners out there camped out at the repair shop looking for issue after issue. Then you have someone with a car known as a lemon and they put 300000 kms on them and do basic maintenance on it if that. For me I buy what I like and then the repairs don't hurt me as much until they get to a certain point.

James

 

Your welcome. If you don't normally take another passenger with you then you can go to some of the mid size which might open up some newer vehicles.

If you can, take the car seats with you and install them in any one you are interested in. Maybe test drive it first, if you take it off the list then don't bother, if you like the car I would test them out. See how they fit in that car and see what kind of access you have to the rear seats. Some are better then others when it comes to putting a small child in it.

James

 

Your welcome. A mid-size should work for you. Most might. The Chysler 200 is nice. I almost bought one with the 3.6L V6 but they wanted a huge down payment at the dealer we were dealing with. So we walked and bought something else. I found a 2013 that fit most of what your looking for. I can't remember how big the trunk was.

I like the Lincoln MKZ and the Ford Fusion as well. My in laws have a Fusion. That can fit the car seats, has a nice trunk and has a V6.

One thing we did for my wife's car was to enter in our price range, mileage and everything in to a car site. Then we would look to see what popped up and make a list of what we were interested in and then break it down. The luxury cars always pop up which make us drool but some are in our range because of very high mileage and that could mean a lot of maintenance costs early on. Have fun looking online, then go kick real tires with a smaller list.

Let me know what you find and what you check out. It would be interesting to see what you think of some of the cars you look at.

James

 

Hatch might be a little harder. I know you can get the Mazda 6 in a hatch. Does she want it for strollers? Most mid sizes have decent trunks. Not all but most. Do she want just a hatch or is a wagon good? What about an SUV?

There are some smaller cars that should work well for just her and the kids that are a hatchback. One is the 4 door VW Golf. It is a bit smaller then you asked for and lacks the V6 but other then that it might work. I'm going to search to see what others I can think of.

James

 

The Subaru Forester would be one but the mileage would be higher then 50000 miles at $10000. But it would have the space, hatch and AWD. A larger car that would work is the Ford Flex. A guy at work seems to love his. Four of us jumped in it two weeks ago to run to get something to eat. There was plenty of room in that. But that blows the budget or blows past the mileage limit.

Minivans are great if you take extra people with you often. We had some for a little while and it was great when we picked up mom.

James

 

Make any make any progress in the search?

James