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Honda. New or "CPO" certified pre-owned. Spend the money up front for new or CPO, save the hassle later of buying used and the previous owner never changing the oil. All of my (3) Honda's have never required anything more than gas and maintenance, brake pads, tires, etc.

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I agree. I was recently in the market for a car and I think the best bang for your buck would be a certified pre-owned Honda, 3-5 years old, less than 50k mileage, and last year of its body style. A CPO 2015 Honda Civic with ~35k miles could be had for $11-14k in California. 31/41MPG, cheap to repair, extremely reliable.

I think toyota beats honda in quality. If you go here:

https://www.carcomplaints.com/Honda/Accord/ you can see that when you compare cars with similar sales volume like the accord and camry at least the last 5 or 6 years toyota has won.

We studied the Toyota quality system in my business classes. They put a lot of emphasis on quality. They use the teachings of Edward Demings (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming).

My family and I have also had great experience with Honda over the years, specifically Civic, CR-V and Fit. The reliability is extraordinary anecdotally and then 4-5 years ago (haven't checked since) it was top rated by those industry reliability ranking surveys, JD Power I believe. Not sure how reliable those studies are or what the current state is now. Also the prices of Honda seem to have been creeping up over the years, especially CR-V so it's hard to actually give a real full life cost answer, you could get lucky with a cheaper upfront car. If you value your time though get something that has a proven record for being reliable.

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