[masraum]

My kids have both had Chevy Sonics. They both paid more, but bought either new or practically new. The nice thing about them is that they are generally much more feature rich than a comparable Toyota or Honda. You might be able to get a decent one that's a little older for $6k.

If the plan is to buy something with <100k miles, then there's potentially going to be little failures that start popping up, starters, alternators, water pumps, etc... I would probably be shooting for something in the 50k-70k range, but maybe I'm biased from cars that I bought when I was younger and poorer and cars didn't last as well as today.

I'm not sure how the winter environment might change what's good for you folks up there.