As someone who's spent the better part of two years car hunting, I want to say a few things.
1) I wish I'd read @KingKrab65's post; I'd have offered to take his Vibe off of his hands
2) The new car AND the used car markets are crap.
3) If it weren't for the sites like autotempest, carsforsale.com, truecar, cargurus, etc, I'd have had a REALLY hard time getting anything as specific as I needed. I didn't have the time to drive into every single damnable tiny lot to inspect their 18 cars to see if they had a CR-V - considering that all the cars look the same now. (Seriously. Park, side by side, a Nissan, Honda, Subaru, Ford, and Toyota of the same class, walk to the back, and tell me if you can figure out which is which based on the backside _without_ the badges)
I've noticed a lot of people talking about getting in and out of lots of newer cars to check for head room, leg room, and so forth - but I won't buy a new car. The last new car I bought was a 1998 Kia Sportage - and I miss that car, even though it was a lemon. (Just mine. A customer had the same model with all the same features but colour, and had none of my issues - like one of the cylinders firing a spark plug out of the head. Not kidding.)
I have very specific needs for a vehicle, because I'm an IT consultant. I need cargo space, I need it to be flat, I need good fuel mileage, and I need reliable. Hyundai, Kia, Subaru, Nissan, etc - they all end up with interesting issues as they age (Subaru, less so, but when they do, they're expensive due to the boxter engines). So, I was stuck with Toyota and Honda to be _sure_ I'd have a vehicle I could rely on, after doing solid maintenance.
In 2016, I bought a 2007 Vibe with 135k miles for $4026, TTL and registration out the door. I just paid $5450, TTL reg out the door, for a 2007 Toyota Matrix. THAT'S how bad the market has become, and I'm pretty darned happy with the price, even with four owners, and a Virginia car the first sevel years of it's life. No wrecks, nothing registered in the CARFAX databases, no flood notes, etc. The front seat is even still solid! No lardasses
I went through and looked at CR-V, Mazda CX-5, Toyota Yaris, Honda Fit, Subaru Forester, and of course, the Vibe/Matrix. I found a few Vibes that might have been good - but they had the 2.4 litre engine with the piston ring problems. I wasn't interested in that expense on top of buying the car AND doing all the unknown maintenance.
Dealers? They _lie_. ALL of them. Small, large, it doesn't matter. I can't tell you how many I went to look at a vehicle, and ended up wasting my time because it had leaks at the rear of the engine (just like mine), were salvage title cars claimed to be 'clean', or weren't salvage, but had VERY obvious unibody (frame) damage once you walked up to the car. They'd take photos from a slight angle to disguise the gaps between body panels, or just deny it had any "frame" damage. I checked a large Subaru dealer? They had a Vibe/Matrix on the lot (forgot which it was). They wanted a high price for it, and it wasn't that great. Then, when I crawled under it? Oil drops. They didn't even make an attempt to clean off the engine.
Things that they'd do.
1) Armor-all the engine compartment. Everything vaguely black or plastic in general would get shined.
2) Distorted pictures.
3) Not answer questions about the VIN number
4) Say it was there, and then when you get there, say it was "just sold". (A couple of those, I believed it. Mostly, in one case, because the sales guy said that he didn't have anything else on the lot that fit those descriptions other than the Impreza that needed to go to the transmission shop.)
5) List car as having a clean title - instead of a repair or salvage title. Or in a case or two, a bond title. (Bond title is better than the others - the bond travels with the title, so you can end up getting the bond back AND get a clean title)
6) List the car with a 'down payment' price as the 'sale price'. They they get huffy when you tell them you want to buy it for the price they listed as the sale price.
7) Distort how many people have "looked at the car" - when you can see on the sales site, like truecar, how many days they've had it listed.
8) Refuse to answer questions about where they _got_ the car. Auction, personal sale, trade-in, etc.
9) Try to sell a "car", but then in the details, it says they're just trolling for a scrap yard to sell parts - for a lot of money.
Right now, I'm feeling pretty good about it. Yes, I'll need new tires, shocks/struts, all fluids flushed out, spark plugs, pay for a full detailing and carpet cleaning, and transfer parts from my Vibe to the Matrix, but I'll have a car I can be pretty sure will take me to 299,999 miles if I need it to. The biggest downside? No roof rack. Minor downside? No "moon and tunes" speaker package or automatic mirrors.
Another thing I was watching out for? No turbo. I do NOT need something that'll blow out and cost me 2k to just buy the part.
thanks for letting me vent!