I bought a 2000 Dodge Neon for $2800 with 87k miles about a year ago to drive to work and around town...well basically to drive 100% of the time I'm not hauling something. It had a lot of problems when I bought it, but I put several hours of wrenching and $350 in parts into it. Local Stealership wanted $1700 to do the work, not including parts
It's run and handled great ever since. Best news is when I calculate miles driven by the average of fuel prices the Neon has saved me about $2,840 in fuel costs. So it's payed for itself this year alone...and help keep the resale value of my truck. But it's got some damn annoying electrical issuse that I can't debug and won't give the stealership my left nut for them to "try" and fix it. That, and the uncomfortable / jacked up interior really hurts my legs and back during road trips has led me to some car shopping these past weeks.This is a matrix I've combined of the cars I've looked at and driven. There are a lot of things to compare cars by but these are what I'm most interested in. The highlighted cells are what I consider leading class. Dodge discontinued the Neon a couple years ago, the Neon shown here is my 2000 Neon for quick reference. All of these 2009 model cars listed are comparible in price and the stats listed for each is given with select trim packages that do not exceed $20,000. Cheverolet and Honda for instance offer more powerfull engines and or better transmissions like the Cobalt SS for example, but the costs exceed my desire.
What strikes me as funny is that my Neon looks better on paper than a 2009 Honda Civic! And overall just how poor the fuel economy is for the gas sipping imports. It's no better than a 2000 Neon, of which I've observed steady 30 city / 34 highway mileage.
What I've come to realize is how good my dumper Neon really is. It runs and handles better than most of these '09 model cars. I was really upset with the overall performance of all of them, save for the Cobalt SS. The observations I made that I don't reflect in the table are the differences in interior. The Ford has the best with the Honda a close second whereas the Cobalt has hardly got better seats and trim than my Neon!
Right now I'm leaning towards a Cobalt, but they have got to offer me a better seat and interior package than they do. I dig the Ford's interior real well but it needs uncorked badly.
I'd like to get an import toyota 4 runner with a 3.0 diesel, that would make a bitchen mom mobile for the wife 
"the game of life of is not so much in holding a good hand as playing a poor hand well"
on the way to the store or work anyways.
