Taurus. I've spent enough time in them as fleet cars to know they drive very well, do good on gas for their size, junkyards are full of them so parts are easy and there are thousands to choose from. We always got good service from them; I never had a problem with any of mine aside from the warping brake rotors all new cars seem to be plagued with. Why suffer with something smaller when you don't need to?
I will second the Buick Park Ave. or LeSabre. Solid, boring momre than enough room and as for parts, the yards are FULL of parts.
A friend just bought a Grand Marquis for about a third of that figure, and it looks really good. It also has the P71 suspension package to boot. Not the best car ever, but it looks even better when you consider the $800 price tag.
Ive never had a Taurus/Sable do as good as a W body. Even the lowly pushrod Taurus motors would be hard pressed to lay down 25 MPG it seemed, and the 3100 and 3800s in the W bodies would routinely lay down close to 30 MPG. But thats just my experience, yours may vary.
Whatever.
Really.
I had an 81 Camaro for $400 that lasted something like 6 years. Just buy something you know how to work on already.
I've been rocking a 2001 Altima with a salvage title for the past 4 years/90K miles. It's got a manual trans to make commuting slightly more fun, but it's definitely still an appliance. Solid as a rock though - mine's nicknamed "Tank". Smallish, but still enough room to carry four normal-sized adults and a couple sets of golf clubs in the trunk.
I'm thinking some kind of Saturn or Hyuandai. Some Hyuandai might still be under warranty.
I will throw in my 2 cents for the Buick Lesabre as mentioned above. 1996 or newer with the Series II is what you want. Plenty of room for 5 comfortably, parts are dirt cheap, nobody gives them a second look.
BBC
How about the late 90's Maxima with the auto trans?
Been looking at the same price range and requirements for a friend and what I've found is....
Late 90s Maxima Late 90s Corolla Early 00s Prizm
I don't know jack about the Maxima and the only thing I know about the Corolla/Prizm twins is that they are absolutely flogged daily by taxi drivers in Bolivia.
Streetwiseguy wrote: Three Neons? One is sure to start....
Nuts! Now I gotta clean the keyboard again! That'll teach me to drink Diet Coke and read this stuff at the same time!
ddavidv wrote: Taurus. I've spent enough time in them as fleet cars to know they drive very well, do good on gas for their size, junkyards are full of them so parts are easy and there are thousands to choose from. We always got good service from them; I never had a problem with any of mine aside from the warping brake rotors all new cars seem to be plagued with. Why suffer with something smaller when you don't need to?
For a transportation appliance, there is a lot to like about these. They have ABSOLUTELY no soul, are invisible to cops, comfy, roomy, and cheap.
The 3.0 Vulcan is an anvil, no timing belt to change, no issues period. the 2000+ cars with the Vulcan are gawdawful slow, and they struggle to crack 25 mpg. The Duratec DOHC V6 is apparently a lot spunkier, but not much thirstier.
Downsides are the complete lack of fun-to-driveness, the aforementioned inexplicably bad fuel economy, and the fact that the automatics seem to self-destruct every 90k or so. (I have only anecdotal evidence on that one, but in my experience, every Taurus/Sable I've been around lunches the trans before 120k, even with good maintenance and fluid changes. YMMV.)
You might be able to get a pretty nice 2nd gen acura legend for that kind of money...
2000ish Mazda 626, or early Mazda 6. With luck you can find a V6 5 speed like the one my wife refuses to part with. This is her third 626 and one was the 4 cyl turbo version. The first two went over 200,000 without any major issues. The current one only has 120k on it because her commute is much shorter now. Just got a set of new Kumhos for it yesterday, so I guess we will be keeping it for a while longer.
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