[bane]

Buy a reliable cheap car that's easy and cheap to maintain and repair. Pay it off as quickly as possible and run it for 10+ years. Your operating cost per mile over a vehicle lifetime like that gets measured in fractions of a dollar per mile.

My almost 13 year old car costs me something like <$.30/mile right now and getting cheaper the older it gets. So far, I've never had a repair that cost more than $300 and gas mileage is comparable to some hybrids. It cost me $12k new and I paid it off in 2 years so my actual purchase cost was something a bit higher, but I didn't let the financer recoup even half of their expected interest off of me.