Quote:
Originally Posted by
svelten 
Definitely a well-maintained, secondhand Fit or Civic. Both affordable, easy to maintain and youthful for your age. The Matrix is worse looking IMO and is basically the Pontiac Vibe rebadged.
You should not be dishing out advice if you really do not know anything about cars. The Vibe is a rebadged Toyota Matrix, just like the 80s Nova and 90-2000s Prism was just a rebadged Corolla. This was due to an agreement between GM and Toyota in which Toyota would take over the NUMMI plant in SoCal to domestically produce a portion of Corollas starting in the early 80s. The only hand Chevy had to play in the creation of any of these cars was the washer pumps, starters and alternators on some models and interiors on all of their branded ones. The Vibrator was way way uglier than the Matrix since they slapped on that hideous Pontiac front end and all that matte gray plastic.
As an interesting aside, the early 2000s Chevy Cavalier was sold in Japan as the Toyota Cavalier, but it was entirely Chevy bumper to bumper. It flopped really really bad here, mostly due to horrendous reliability.
I say Fit, Mazda 3, 03+ Toyota corolla (that body was very reliable, though the 00-02 models had a sludge issue), Scion tC, Civic, Toyota Yaris/Vitz Hatch, Imprezza WRX, etc would be a good car either new or cert used.
