I drive hundreds of miles per month and the best all around car I ever had was a 2005 Honda Accord. Perfect mix of fuel economy and room. You could probably find an '03-04 in your budget easily.
From driving plenty of other stuff over the years:
Driven a few Mazda Protege's and they are super reliable but small. Same with Corolla's and Sentra's.
Small trucks ride too rough to endure a 20-hour round trip and the gas mileage isn't that great even with a 4 cyl. Full-size has worse mileage but more room.
Early 2000's Altima's and Camry's are getting cheap, but are known to have potentially expensive engine problems.
Mid-late 90's Lexus and Infiniti are pretty darn good. Pre-99 ES300 is everywhere and cheap, non-interference engine. I drove a '98 Infiniti Q45t for a year and that's a ROAD car. V8 engine, loaded, never a single problem with it. My second best car ever.
'04-07 Taurus is a good car and tough in an accident
ale:
Now for what I wouldn't buy:
One of those Mustangs. I drove Mustangs for years and they are fun on dry pavement but horrible on wet or snowy roads. The older V6 version is basically a GT with all the driving enjoyment removed.
Most domestics. Some are reliable enough but until recently domestics didn't build competitive vehicles, at least in your price range.
Any European car such as VW, Audi, BMW, Volvo, etc. The resale goes down like a rock and although they are nicer than a domestic, they all use infuriating proprietary diagnostic software that can't be analyzed by your garden-variety scan tool. Plus they can all suffer bad problems. Stay away.
No Honda Civic automatics. No Subaru's at all. No mopar 2.7L. No Caddy Northstar. No Maxima with a 5-speed automatic. No early Altima(02-04).
If you scan Craigslist, you'll find most of this junk on there in your price range, so hopefully this'll help you steer clear of the duds. If you can't hardly find something on CL chances are it's because it's a decent vehicle somebody actually wants to keep.
