No offense to Rural, but don't use people's anecdotes to decide if a particular car is reliable. Go to your local library & borrow a copy of Consumer Reports annual guide. Every great brands or models have lemon years. You have to do the research and base the decision on real facts.
No offense taken here. The OP asked how I found mine so farm so I answered.
In addition to Consumer Reports, I'd add learn enough about cars to be a good judge of used ones yourself. The average for a model is good to know, but nothing beats looking under the hood if you know what you're looking at.
Agreed!
All too often, reliability correlates more with maintenance and driver habits than with make or model. Some cars take abuse better than others, some don't. Reliability even correlates much more with maintenance and driver habits than with mileage.
(I define reliability as "the car won't let you down in the middle of nowwhere". I do not understand it as "you will never have to do replace anything" - that is not realistic.)
Some cars DO have their flaws, however, and you need to know them. For example, you would NOT want a Saab 9-5 with the 3.0 litre diesel. Nor would you want an early 2.0 liter Volkswagen TDI (injector and cylinder head issues), but the predecessor 1.9 is literally bullet-proof and highly recommend. You would want to know that overhauling the front axles of VW Passat and Audi A6 is a rather unpleasant work and extremely expensive. If you keep the car long enough, you might very well have to do this - but then, properly maintenanced, they could last for 400.000+ km, so these 1500€ can be very well spent...
If you are going to buy a car, do your research. For each model (and version!) you think of. Sometimes a car starts as a lemon, but with the first facelift it's issues were adressed and it's fine now. Sometimes facelifts or successors of great cars be worse, because the manufacturer did save a little bit to much on parts costs or corrosion protection.
Some Volvos and Saab are extremely reliable, second only to old Mercedes. Some are the complete opposite. Mercedes has a reputation to "last forever", but the w210 (E-classe 1996 onwards) is prone to rust in no time. Ford and (most) GM cars are considered to be inferior, low price, low quality crap over here in Germany, but that's because they really fucked up in the late 80s and early 90s -while actually, for example, some 2000-onwards Opel (GM) are extraordinarily reliable.
The information is all there, the internet is full of it. I even spent a considerable amount researching espresso machines, before I bought mine (used, of course) - so I really don't get it when people buy extremely expensive things like cars on the basis of nothing more than "I thought this brand was reliable".
Do the Research. Before you buy. And then closely inspect the actual car, because bad maintenance can kill even the best and most reliable car.
@timshel:
I would concur to keep the Civic. Buying it new was a bad move, but you already did it. That game is lost. Loosing it now would mean taking the depreciation hit and loosing again, buying a bigger car now means driving a bigger car for some years while you do not need it and loosing for the third time. When you really have kids in 3-5 years, you can have a look at your real needs, decide to keep it, or sell it and buy a hatchback, or perhaps it might even be better to sell the Accord? Who knows
now?
Of course it would be cheaper to sell it now, even ehen your underwater on the loan, and buy something used (a lot of cars from the early 90s are extremely fuel efficient, you just have to find them). But then, you need some knowledge of cars and have an idea on how to keep operating costs under control without sacrificing on maintenance. Accidentally buying a lemon will ruin this strategy and to me it seems like you are ready yet for that kind of risk.
So keeping the civic might be your best move.