You are one lucky stiff! All of those are good. All of those are NOT cheap to work on. Just price a starter or alternator for ANY of them.

That said, my 2005 sedan had been virtually flawless. I have only changed the oil, filter, tires, cabin filter, Tires (Factory tires wear at a horrible rate.) etc. At 41,000 miles I am doing the brakes, but they don't really need it.

What ever you end up with RESIST the TEMTATION to speed and drive recklessly! You are very young and don't have a lot of time behind the wheel. You don't yet know where all the cops love to hide and where you can get away with stupid stuff yet. Take your car to the track if you have a NEED FOR SPEED....

 

thank you everyone for the good advice.. I think im sold on the g35s...

now...its up between an 05-06 g35x.. what kind of price should i consider a good deal for one of these with like 30k miles on it.

 

My first 2 cars were a hand me down 67 Impala (until the engine fell out) and a 75 Nova. Of course, with college expenses, I ended up doing a lot of work like oil changes, etc, myself to save a few dollars.

 

you may want to check on your insurance cost for the G.

 

At least you're not getting the saab....BAAAAAAAD car

 

Obviously, we're biased here and like the G. One thing to keep in mind is how long you plan on keeping the car. You probably have another year of high school, and then 4 years of college (maybe more if you do post-graduate work). So, if you get a 2 year old car, and assuming you don't get another car for at least 5 more years (and maybe more since you'll have other expenses to worry about after graduating), then reliability, and not just performance, should be one of your top priorities. The G is generally rated by Consumer Reports in the 2nd to highest reliability rating, which is basically very good. Another car to consider would be the Acura TL, which generally gets ranked in the highest category in terms of reliability (but, IMO, its performance is not as good as the G... but when you're spending all your time in NJ traffic, may not be noticeable most of the time). Go pickup an issue of Consumer Reports Used Car buying guide at the local bookstore and make sure you get what you want, performance wise, and something that should last you beyond college (unless your folks get you a college graduation present...... :-) ).

 

Thank you for the good advice randman.. My father is a consumer reports addict and has every issue so I have done some further research in consumer reports aswell. As for the ACura.. I think im sold on the G its seems like the best car for the price range.

 

Consumer Reports provides relative rankings, which obscure how small the actual differences can be. Especially since the problem rates reported by their readers tend to be low, about 0.18 problems per car for the current model year, and not much higher for other recent years.

So if a car has a 50% higher problem rate than another, we're still often talking about one extra problem for every ten cars.

I'm conducting reliability research to provide absolute stats on all problems, not just those that people "consider serious" enough to report to CR (CR's survey is worded this way, which introduces a lot of subjectivity).

My initial results:

http://www.truedelta.com/results0906.php

Results will be updated every three months, with the next ones in a few weeks. I'll have results on the 2003 G35 and hopefully the 2007 as well in the late May results.

More info on the research: Vehicle reliability research

As for the Saab 9-3, I'm not crazy about the car myself, but recently I've heard of Aeros going for $10k under MSRP. Not a decent buy at $36,000, seems much more attractive at $26,000.

 

wow im gonna have to investigate

 

Your parents are going buy you a car, who is going to make the monthly payment? Who is going to pay the insurance? Who is going to pay for the maintance?

Those are all questions I would think about before I made the jump into a higher end car.

BTW my first car was a 94 Sentra

 

You should be looking at a Maxima or a TL.

Also to the people that recommend he invest the balance after buying a used car, I'm sure his parents arent paying cash for the vehicle. They're probably financing it and making payments.

Btw, my first car was a 1999 Sentra GXE. I brought it when I was 18 and it was 2 years old.

 

nah theyre paying cash... they dont like monthly payments

btw my first car was a 1986 325e with 260,000 on it.

 

The regular Consumer Reports magazines only have information about the cars at the time they came out, and their "predicted" reliability. It's the "Consumer Reports Used Car Buying Guide" that has historical information about older cars, and actual data based on previous model year cars' reliability. Back when I was single (the old days), reliability was more important to me than it is today. Today, I can just get my wife to drop me off and pick me up at the dealership if I have car problems. Of course, the G should be pretty reliable.

 

Man. You're lucky first and foremost. Second. If I were you i'd get a used accord and put that money into a CD account or something. In a couple of years you''ll probably want a re designed G35 Coupe and be depressed.