Any 4 cylinder Toyota or Nissan or Mazda P/U truck should meet your requirements…Stick Shift…
I have a question. Do SUV’s need to have four of the same tires? My dealership says no, my tire guy says yes. Anybody have this issue come up?
A vehicle equipped with AWD needs 4 tires of the same brand, size, and tread depth. Failure to do this will inevitably lead to very expensive damage to the AWD system.
Incidentally, you will get more responses if you create your own thread, rather than hijacking this existing one.
While normally I wouldn’t recommend a new car for a graduate student, you will be driving 30 to 40 miles a day. With a new car, you start off with new tires, a new battery, etc. If your graduate studies were as demanding as mine, you don’t have time to fuss around having a car repaired. I drove older cars as a graduate student, but I could walk to my classes.