I don't know Boston well enough to know how slippery it gets there or how often you'd have to put on chains. Looking at Boston craigslist ads, I see these:
toyota rav4 2002
2005 Jaguar x type Awd (basically a Ford Contour?)
2004 Subaru Forester 2.5X AWD (this looks good)
2004 Subaru Impreza TS AWD 77K (manual transmission okay?)
2003 subaru forester 106k