Let me take my facepuches right up front. My wife and I drive... a lot, we have several vehicles. Even if we thin our herd, we'd still need 2 good reliable vehicles due to enjoying our house, and jobs that are in opposite directions. We also drive on weekends frequently 100+ miles to visit our families (hers is 100 miles one direction, mine is 100 miles the other!). While we could optimize parts of this situation, we don't want to.
I want to replace a 16-17mpg Jeep, and currently am looking at a 2005 Honda civic ex coupe automatic (my wife can drive stick but we stumbled on this car). KBB rates it at over 8k in "fair" condition. Since I know there is a large knowledge base on the forums here, I wanted to ask for opinions. If I can get the car for 7k, it's only got 46,000 miles, is this worth it? The car doesn't seem to have too many complaints (read: common problems) compared to a lot of cars out there, and as I work on my own cars I am willing to pay a small premium for ones that need less maintaining. In this case according to KBB, it's about 2-3k price difference between the same car with 115,000 miles.
Does anybody own one of these cars? If so, have you had many issues? Am I thinking about paying way too much for this particular vehicle, even if I plan to keep it? (Am I thinking about paying too much for a vehicle in general?) *Note that I estimate my out of pocket cost will break even in 1-2 years due to gas mileage ($2,000 savings) and selling of current vehicle ($4,500). I know this vehicle never makes MMM list's of cars to buy, but we don't have kids, so we don't NEED tons of room. We have a truck to haul things with, so we don't need cargo space. Should I be looking at different vehicles all together?