No time these days for old Mercedes as primary rides....
 

I need suggestions for a car for my daughter, a young professional 18mo out of engineering school, that will replace the odd assortment of rapidly aging Mercedes I've been putting her into lately.

Originally, I'd planned to restore the Euro 240D I have and give it to her as a grad gift but, changes in my life are making that, as well as, maintaining my other Benzos more and more impractical. So that I can get some of these projects off of my plate, I plan to front her the down pmt or $2k on a newer vehicle...basically the approximate value of the 240.

I know positively ZIP about newer cars...a '91 Komatsu D20 is the newest thing I own. What does the Oracle (Forum) suggest?

Its hard to argue against a toyota corrolla.

Tom W

Yeah, that's what I was thinking too...or a Camry.

Corolla: $14k
Civic: $14K

.............not having to go fix daughter's ride at any given moment: PRICELESS

Bingo.

I've always been a fan of the Mazda Protege. It has been the darling of Consumer Reports for years, and often gets overlooked by consumers who are obsessed with the Corollas and Civics of the world.

I believe the Protege is now badged as the Mazda 3.

Zoom zoom.

A friend at work just traded his POS Audi A6 in for a brand new Corolla, and hasn't looked back. Leather interior and all. Not quite the generic 4-wheels and a box that they used to be. Not to mention the 30mpg it gets.

I'd go for a Civic or an Accord rather than a Toyota or Camry. The interiors are much better quality, and they drive much safer. The corolla and camry are wallowing pigs where the Hondas are more taut. The Honda Fit is a good car with good gas mileage and is very practical too thanks to it being a hatchback. If you look at an interior of a new Camry you can see the interior quality has totally disappeared. The plastics look like Toyota bought some New Old Stock from 90's GM and there are huge gaps everywhere.

civic?

sounds decent

I second the Accord thing.

MY son has a 2000 Acord 4cyl that I maintain for him. Choose a nice one with just over 100k miles on it and "refresh" it with a timing belt, balancer belt, tensioners and water pump and you are good to go - worry free - for another 100k miles. I just did the "refresh" on his. Unless you are pretty comfortable at engine wrenching I would suggest you choose a good indie for this project. I would expect the "refresh" to cost between 500 and 800 for an indie to do it. I think the dealer charges 1k.

Check out the 1998-2002 series. They are good cars yet simple enough to work on.

KBB shows them valued between 5k and 8k these days.

I have a 2000 Accord DX and it's a bullet proof car. With hand crank windows, manual locks, manual seats theres not much to go wrong.

However Honda did have issues with the automatic transmissions of that generation but mines got 110K and is fine. I believe they extended warranty of the tranny to 100K.

I just checked on the extended tranny warranty last week. It was only to 90k miles. His has been fine.

It is an LX with power windows, power locks and cloth seats. I think the EX model has the leather interrior...

If she wants something that's "cute" and not boring get her a Scion TC.

Gt6+
 

For fun and reliability I would recommend a Triumph GT6+; Volvo 164; Rover 3500; Plymouth Volare with the slant six, Cosworth Vega; Austin America, or an AMC Hornet.

Oh jeeze, I forgot what decade we are in. Must be the Dewars typing. Sorry Randy.

Cheers

The new Civic's seem to be very popular with girls around here.

Pretty much anything new with a warranty, its really hard to go wrong in that price range these days.