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Here's one of our favorite tricks. We look for award-winning cars, but we look for award-winners from a few years back. That way, they've dropped into our target price range.
One of the most 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; the 09 list won't be out until sometime in May.
• 2008
• 2007
• 2006
• 2005
• 2004
• 2003
• 2002
• 2001
• 2000
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.
The 2009 Consumer Reports Auto Issue, one of our yearly favorites, put affordable luxury into perspective. A brand-new Mazda Miata can be found for around $16,000 (thanks to the discounts from sagging car sales). For the same amount of money, you can get a lot more car -- specificially, an 04 Infiniti G35. That's an incredibly well-built car and likely to hold up well for many, many more years.
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 Grand Vitara.
The lowest priced 09s that we've seen to date include the Chevy Aveo, the Kia Rio, the Hyundai Accent and the Toyota Yaris. All can be found for around $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 was the 2008 North American Car of the Year, and 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. The 09 earned honors from both US News and Consumer Reports, and we expect more honors are on the way.
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