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Probably the most famous award in the automobile industry is the Motor Trend Car of the Year. You can find a complete list of the winners at this Wikipedia page.
The idea here is to look for winning cars from a few years back that have dropped into your price range. The 2001 winner was the Chrysler PT Cruiser, and according to autos.msn.com, you can find an 04 cruiser for $10,000 to $13,000.
The 2000 winner was a luxury car -- a Lincoln LS -- and according to Kelly Blue Book you can find a 2002 for $11,000 to $14,000 according to KBB.
A more comprehensive set of awards is the annual Editors Most Wanted award from Edmunds.com. The list covers the gamut from sedans to trucks, and again, go back a few years and find the more affordable ones. The Edmunds lists can be found at the links below:
• 2007
• 2006
• 2005
• 2004
• 2003
• 2002
• 2001
• 2000
And finally, we'd like to suggest the NewBuyer.com Web site which lists all the awards won by each manufacturer. You can find the complete list here.
Here's a fact for you: one fifth of all used Mercedes are sold to people with bad credit. In fact, a third of all used luxury car sales involve people with a credit score under 600.
Even the original bling machine, the Cadillac Escalade, can now be found for less than $15,000 (well, at least if it's a 2000 or earlier). Two luxury brands, Acura and Lexus, are famous for reliability -- and you can find them in the $10,000 range in model years around the turn of the century.
In August 07, cars.com published a list of the ten best used cars under $10,000, and that list included two 05 Fords (Focus and Taurus) and two 03 models -- the Mazda Protege and Mercury Sable.
All other cars on the list were 02s, and they included the Chevy Impala, Buick LeSabre, Ford Windstar, the Oldsmobile Aurora and two always-top-selling Hondas, the Accord and the Civic.
The Civic and Accord also topped a list by Edmunds.com editors as best used car values under $10,000. For the Civic, that covers the years 03 to 05; for the Accord it covers the years 01 to 03.
Just as Hyundai focused for years on bad credit customers (until they got their quality up to where the brand could compete on its own), Suzuki is now the industry leader in affordable new cars. Better yet, according to reliability ratings at places such as autos.msn.com, Suzuki cranks out a quality product for its price. Car critics have been kind to the Forenza, and even with some options, you can snag a new 08 for under $14,000.
The lowest priced 08s that we've seen to date include the Chevy Aveo, the Kia Rio, the Hyundai Accent and the Toyota Yaris. All list for less than $12,000.
A great new automobile ratings site is run by U.S. News and World Report, and their top-ranked small car is the Honda Fit (which is in the $14,000 to $16,000 range.
And finally, while it's not in our $10,000 to $15,000 price range, we have to give some props to the Chevrolet Malibu. It's not only the North American Car of the Year, both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times have declared the car superior to the Honda Accord -- an achievement an American car maker has been seeking for years.
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