There is such a thing as a cheap car you can rely on.
Methodology
To arrive at these 15 vehicles, we started with our own listing of hundreds of thousands of used vehicles currently for sale, and applied several filters to ensure these were quality recommendations. First, the cars had to have an average listing price under $10,000. Second, reliability was crucial. Using results from JD Power's Vehicle Dependability Study, which looks at owner-reported problems in the first 3 years of new-vehicle ownership, we weeded out any vehicle that didn't get at least three and a half out of five Power Circles (above average) in the Overall Dependability category, and all but two received four or more (better than most). We removed all vehicles that were rated less than 21 mpg combined to ensure decent mileage (except for the 2002 Mercury Grand Marquis, which was kept alive for its perfect dependability score). Finally, we stripped out all cars that didn't have what we thought was decent volume in the used car market. Sure, we'd love to recommend a 2002 Honda Insight with an average listing price just under $10,000 and a combined 53 mpg, but there was only one for sale at the time we wrote this.
.jpg)
