I want to spend no more than 10,000. Less would be great. Need 4 wheel or all wheel drive. Would love some advice…either good to buy or avoid.
What will you use it for? If it’s all on-road, you can use AWD. If you will do any serious off-road driving, you must have 4WD. You also need to tell us how many passengers, whether you tow, and how much cargo room you need. Do you car how much you pay for fuel?
toyota rav4 that has had maintaince done are hard to beat
check out www.rav4world.com great site devoted to rav4
Need 4 wheel or all wheel drive.
Think about it. On road driving very seldom if ever needs it. If you are thinking about driving in the snow, consider the better alternative of winter tyres. All season tyres are worthless on snow and ice.
While 4Wd or AWD will help you get through some really deep snow or ice and it can help you get out of the ditch that you slid into, real winter tyres can help keep you out of the ditch to begin with and keep you from sliding into that car in front of you when the traffic light changed which 4WD will not.
Few people live were the snow is not plowed and is deep enough to call for 4WD. Those drives are more complex and can be more expensive to own.
If you really live in OT travel to the back woods or go off roading then yea, go for it, but make sure you are also getting the ground clearance you will need
Don’t typically have passengers. Want to be sensible with gas. My work is being on call…sometimes overnight. Could have to be driving in rural counties in western NC. Want some security about changing weather around here…and a reliable vehicle. Do not need off road use.
It sounds like you would be very happy with either a Toyota RAV4 or a Honda CRV. Both come in AWD, are extremely reliable, economical, long lived, easy to drive, and will get you through any weather. A friend of mine bought a CRV for his wife, who is a 5’-0" school teacher. She’s had it for over 8 years now and it has never let her down. Her previous vehicle was a much mre expensive Volswage Passat, which gave her no end of problems. Hyundai SUvs have been much improved lately, and a relatively new one, such as the Tucson or Santa Fe comes highly recommended. Because of your job, I would not recommend less reliable vehicles such as any Jeep, small Hummer, Ford Escape, Chevrolet Uplander, or any Kia model.
Also consider Subaru. Everything they make is all wheel drive.
Subaru 2001+, avoid 2000 & prior due to faulty headgaskets.
Toyota RAV4 used has an excellent AWD system. Honda CRV’s AWD is not much better than FWD, sort of after the fact.
If you go with the 2.2L engine, you can use 2000 prior, too. It was the 2.5L engine that had head gasketproblems. Actually we liked our 99 Legacy Brighton better than the 03 Legacy Limited we replaced it with.
An AWD vehicle would work well for you. Cosider a Suburu, Toyata Rav4, and Honda CR-V.
there’s a great website, http://www.iSeeCars.com, where you can search for used cars under your 10,000 budget and find all the cars for sale that’s listed on the Internet. Kinda like Google but for used car listings. it only has coverage for the Boston area now but hopefully it will have other cities soon.