what is a good, cheap small/medium car?
 

my friend is looking for a car, his budget is $1300, his last car has some major issues so i'm trying to help him find something that will be reliable, relatively low miles etc. but i dont really know of any especially reliable cars for that cheap

A-bodys....

Celebritys... 2.8L v6... mine had 248K on it, still going when i sold it...

Definately. A-bodies. Look for a Ciera, Century, Celebrity, or 6000. They are very reliable.

how about non-GMs? just keeping all options open, and what about saturns? i always see em on ebay with over 300k miles

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Saturns are ok, just stay away from the high mileage, automatic ones. The auto trannies in those are pretty weak. Get a stick.

A tempo, of course. j/k, unless you can find a gramma one. they always tend to be abused. i got lucky with mine ;)

Intrigues of course!!

Actually theyre kinda in between medium and large...theyre smaller inside than they look.

I have to sit with my seat almost as far back as it will go to drive and only about 6'1 with shoes.

And forget about fitting much of an adult in the backseat with the front seats all the way back.

Definetely smaller than a Bonneville, and also the frame is shorter than all the other W-bodies, by a whopping 1.5 inches I think.

Not sure how easy it would be to find one with higher mileage, but theyre around, and they dont hold their value extremely well.

I think the blue book on mine is about 3-4 grand and I have around 119,xxx.

comes with either the 3.8 or 3.5 both of which are pretty darned reliable.

also most rice cars are actually fairly reliable, Civics, Corollas, that kinda thing, but keep in mind most cars that get good gas mileage are outrageously priced right now.

When I was car shopping i looked at a Civic that had 167,xxx miles on it and they wanted a little over 5k for it as I recall.

Mom drives a Nissan Sentra. She likes it so far, known to be reliable. I trust Nissan personally. Not sure on price, it was rekatively cheap new, all things considered, I don't have a number to give you off hand though.

saturns are fine, i drove one, with nitrous (100 shot) over 300K with an auto. i've seen them upwards of 400K, they are solid, and beyond that they are absolutly the easiest car to work on, bar none.