well when I started driving I started with my parents cars so I was driving a ford taurus for a few years and then my parents traded that in on a 95 mystique that my dad drove for about a year when he had a long commute into work everyday after he finished with that job the mystique was the car I drove to school for little bit after I graduated from the junior college and staarted work for a bit my parents told me it was time for me to get my own car so I started looking for something that would be pretty much like the mystique that I liked driving and ended up with a 98.5 silver SE V6 manual (mystique was also the V6 manual combo) I drove that for about a year and then totaled it by coming around a oily corner and slipping into the other lane and hitting a van headon after that I started looking again for a car and looked at
Nissan Maxima (few years old)
Nissan Altima (a year or 2 old)
VW Jetta (used but still most were to expensive with what I wanted on them)
Subaru Legacy GT (used and hard to find in manual in my price range)
a few older saab 4 door hatchbacks (damn insurance company wanted to much for one of them)
and of course that silly ford contour again
I ended up getting a new 2000 Silver SE V6 manual with just about all options (traction control/ABS/moonroof)
and so that is the car(my only car) I rack up my miles on now

(about 40K a year)