2003 Mazda Protege LX 38K
or
2005 Pontiac Vibe 95K
both for 7,700
ideas, suggestions, anything?
JMHO anyway, but I would generally take the older, lower miles vehicle, assuming both vehicles are solid mechanically and clean.
With used vehicles depreciation is not an area of concern in my book.
There’s not really enough information here upon which to make an informed decision, but if that’s all there is to go on I’d take the Protege.
IMHO 150k is the magic range of a vehicle where your least likely to have major problems. This is in my experience over 3 cars and my family’s 20 vehicles(nutty Catholics with many siblings 
) over the years.
The good question is how many miles/year do you drive?
I drive about 30K a year…
the 05 vibe comes with a 30K warranty and the 03 comes with limited one month dealer warranty. Both of these vehicles are 4 bangers and I am just worried about running into a bunch of problems with that many miles on the Vibe
I’d say it’s a coin toss, but would probably go with the Vibe. High miles on newer cars usually means a lot of easy highway miles. The Vibe is a Toyota with Pontiac badges, so it should be good for 200,000 miles if it has been taken care of properly. Condition is more the key here than miles. Just my opinion.
Normally I would run far, far away from Pontiac, as I’ve had a few of them, and they were all constantly problematic, at best. But, two things make the Vibe an exception to this rule. First, the Vibe is actually a Toyota Matrix in GM clothing. So, it’s likely it will be very reliable. Second, a friend of mine owns a Vibe, he loves it, and he hasn’t had any trouble with it, and he’s had it for a few years now. The Mazda isn’t a bad car either, but between the two, I’d probably favor the Vibe.