Question: I’m looking at new(er) cars and dang if I don’t see a 2000 Volvo S40 for $6500 with 120K on it. Since I only drive 8K a year, in 4 years, the car will be 8 years old with 160K on it.
…snip…
Smart man … I like your thinking. I would do the same thing too.

Answer: Fair enough.
I trust we both can see pros and cons in each approach to “surveying/testing” different models. Ideally people would read both magazines’ studies. Or, get this, a **meta-study** could be made of all of them! God the PhDs in the crowd should be ROFLing over this one. And yet…
BTW, I stopped by the libary and looked at Consumer Reports latest Car issue (it’s always the April issue). Three things of note for interested parties:
1. The 2003 Hyundai Santa Fe and 2003 Hyundai Sonata are “Recommended” cars. (Not so for any of the other 2003 Hyundai models.) Few 2003 cars are so recommended. Several Toyotas and Hondas are, as always, but not all Toyotas and Hondas. I didn’t look at the criterion for this, but I think it surely must have to do with price, reliability, and warranties.
2. Ya, the tables with the little black, red, and white circles still clearly indicate better reliability with Hondas and Toyotas *over the years*. (Newer is always more reliable, of course.)
3. The price for most or all of the Hyundais is now overlapping considerably with comparable Hondas and Toyotas(!)
You are fabricating this stuff. That is for sure. Don’t get me wrong. I love both Hondas and Toyotas. There are quite a few Hondas that I like more than their counterpart Toyotas, but Reality suggests otherwise. Although, I hate the 8th generation Corolla, but it was by no means “slow”. I drove it for 3 days as a courtesy car from Toyota while my 04 Corolla S was prepped for a few days. It was very unimpressive, rough, buzzing, too much road noise, cheap interior and light, but not slow by any means. As for the 9th generation Corolla, I have the official stats in front of me and 2004 Corolla with a manual transmission does a 0-60 in 7.9 secs, whereas, a 2004 Civic DX (115Hp) does a 0-60 in 10.5 secs 2004 Civic EX (127 HP) does a 0-60 in 8.81 secs 2004 Civic Si Coupe does it in 8.0 secs flat. I took my 2004 Corolla outside the city in the mountains and my friends in 2002 Civic EX. They had a hard time keeping up with me. I comfortably out-accelerated them by a long margin at any speed. They were thoroughly impressed at the end of the trip.

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