good point about financial situation....my wife is a teacher and I work for a municipal gov't....we don't make a lot of money. We don't live from pay-check to pay-check but we're not too far from that.

So, what can I expect in annual maintenance/repair costs for these cars? Am I going to pay for the car several times over, over the life of a car? Or are they generally fairly stable. Simply posed: are these cars expensive to maintain?

thx -harv