Not sure which car to get..help?

[RaymondG]

Most people told me to never buy new car if you are average salary person , you probably want some 2-3 year old car which will save you somewhere near 20-30% .

What is an average salary?

 

[GandalfTheWise]

I'm looking to purchase a used car. I have saved up enough money to buy a decent one. My family has owned Toyotas their entire life and frankly, all of us are ready for a change.

My preferences: 2015-2017, reliable, low maintenance cost [the usual oil change, tire rotation, etc-no major issues outside of those], great for winter driving, fuel efficient.

I'm willing to consider Toyota [we've owned Corollas] and other 'years'. I just want some helpful advice on the cars YOU'VE owned/driven and ANY OTHER recommendations outside of your personal experience. Please mention the Make, Model, and year as I hope to do extensive research on each recommendation.

Thank you for your time : )

We've got a '15 Subaru Forrester XT. It was the first new new car we got (since used prices at the time were so high for a 1 YO Forrester we decided to go new). We now have about 70K miles on it. We love it. We got the turbo version (XT) because we have a small camper we tow so we wanted the extra power and heavier duty suspension and brakes. It definitely has a lot of get up and go and handles very well. We were once on a winding country road (with some sharp 90 degree curves down to 15 MPH) when some jerk in an expensive looking sports car started tailgating and honking after he pulled on behind me at an intersection. I let him zoom by and then stuck about 3 seconds distance behind him for about 5 miles. I never even needed to put the CVT into manual mode to get higher revs out of the engine. We usually drive fairly conservatively. In summer we get usually get close to 30 MPG and mid 20s with winter blend gas. The non turbo versions get better mileage. Plenty of room, handles well, great visibility in all directions, reasonably comfortable (though I find the seats a bit stiff when sitting in there for more than 4 to 5 hours driving in a day). A few days in a row of 5 to 6 hours of driving and I definitely start getting a bit sore and stiff. We never had heated seats before and love them.

It seems decent in winter though tires play a big role in that! It kept me out of the ditch one day. I was on a 2 lane county road with a few inches of unplowed snow. A plow was coming from the other direction (with his blade partly in my lane) so I slowed down to perhaps 15 to 20 MPH and moved out of his way so I was creeping along with one set of wheels on the shoulder. I slowly tried to ease back onto the road when my front tire caught the edge of the pavement and the back end started sliding toward the ditch. The AWD and traction control kicked in and the car simply went the direction I was steering. It took perhaps a couple seconds and the car stopped the skid and straightened out.

One of our kids (married with 1 child and another on the way) has a '13 (+/- 1 year) Legacy that they like a lot.

Our Subaru was the first in our entire extended family, and unless something really bad happens to change our mind, we're probably going to be going with Subarus for cars and SUVs from here on out.