I'd have a real hard time paying $14,000 for something with almost 100K miles on it, no matter what it is. A couple of years ago, I bought a '09 Forester with 14,500 miles on it for about that much. :eek:

Toyota or Honda

Yep, we bought ours when the 2nd year came out, 2008. We bought a very early production first year 2007 made 8-6-2006, and it was a "program" car. I think the program was lemon!
But it was totally loaded, with sunroof, running boards, entertainment system for kids in the back etc. Listed for 33k, and we paid 25. love the size of it. My wife wouldn't trade it for anything, she loves it.

Now you can do much better than that. There is a board full of Nitro lovers here. Pretty interesting reading, and it has helped me a lot.

I'd totally be down for a Forester.
the wife.....not so much.

I'm going to do a hard sell on the Rav 4 I think.
They have stellar reviews from what I've read.


at least I've finally convinced her not to get a Compass. Good god; we test drove one about 4 years ago and it was a complete dog on power. inside was cheap etc.

Got the wife a 2010 Rav4 with 23k miles a couple months back, and she's very happy with it. I had to sell her on it as she was having a hard time for whatever reason with the idea of it. She has said on a few occasions that she's not sure why she didn't want it, but is glad now we went that way.

Have her drive a Forester XT (turbo model) and she may change her mind.

She would still have to put up with lesbian jokes, though.

Small sample size, but the 2 or 3 people I have known with Grand Cherokees have all had problems with them. I owned a Wrangler that gave me no issues. I bought another Wrangler about a year and a half ago and returned it the next day because the electrical system went completely apeshit literally as I was driving the thing home.

I currently own an Xterra. It wasn't my first choice, but when I returned the Jeep it was sitting there and I could afford to pay cash for it. It's got about 80k and runs great. In fact it's the best car ever made. Wanna buy it? :titus:

By the way, my wife's sister-in-law insisted on going the huge SUV route a couple of years ago and bought a Ford Expedition for a decent price. I didn't really understand the reasoning (they only had one kid at the time) but have to admit that it's a really nice rig. They get 18 mpg (about as good as you can expect on any large SUV) and have had zero problems with it despite SIL's lead foot. The thing is loaded, too, with air-conditioned seats and all of the entertainment packages.

We recently did a lot of research on compact SUVs and came to the conclusion that the RAV4 was the best compact SUV available, especially the 2013 model that was redesigned. We will be purchasing one towards the end of the year in hopes of getting a slightly better deal. I know that the CRV is a huge hit but it doesn't quite have the styling nor is the interior load capacity as large.

My wife's car is a '06 CR-V that we bought new. It's been a good rig for us, is comfortable and has better load capacity than my Forester.

However, it is so loud that I hate driving it any distance. If you want to hear music, you have to crank it so loud that you can't talk plus it sort of drills into your skull over time. I hope the newer CR-V's are better about this but Honda kind of has a rep for skimping on the sound deadening.

I put about 7000 miles on a RAV4 rental about 6 months ago. I couldn't get over how cheap it felt and that the gas mileage was much lower than I thought it would be.

I looked up the MSRP out of curiosity and I thought they must be crazy to charge that much for that car. The 2013 must be ALOT better.

Uh, this. The 2002 Grand Cherokee I just bought only has 50k more than that on it, and it was $9,000 cheaper.

Oh, and screw that idiot who said stay away from Jeep products.

I've got a 2005 Jeep Grand Cherokee with 60,000 on it (wife's vehicle) and have never had a single issue with it. Well, it squeals like crazy backing out of the driveway when it's cold, but that's it.

Absolutely. Jeep does make some crap but there is absolutely nothing wrong with cherokees. There is a reason there's six billion of them on the road.

I don't know of all the mechanical differences, but isn't it possible a rental car gets a little bit of a different level of abuse? I have no idea how rental car companies work but I would guess they don't hesitate to utilize vehicles that have had it pretty rough prior to them.