2002 Honda Civic Sedan, 0 miles when I bought it, still had the factory shipping plastic on it.
It's not a sweet ride, it's more like an automotive appliance. It's reasonably comfortable, I change the oil regularly and take it for all the scheduled maintenance and services. But I don't take particularly good care of it.
Everything is cheap with it, tires, gas, etc.
It's only broken down on me once, and my insurance covered the tow costs, the part was a $100 Oxygen sensor.
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I recommend taking a look at consumer reports, look at make models for cars you are interested in, look at the used car reliability history and pick the cheapest possible car with perfect or near perfect reliability over the last 5 years. Then buy a brand new version of that car unless it's the first year of an all new model year. If that's the case, you can usually buy the outgoing model at a discount and benefit from a few years of manufacturing know how.
I came from a family thought bought exclusively used cars (and still does) and in the time I've owned my 1 car I bought new, my parents have been through maybe 7 cars? A friend of mine who also buys used exclusively, but doesn't consult Consumer Reports has been through 11 cars.
I also went through a string of used cars until finally deciding to just buy new. You might get lucky with a used car, but you never know what's happened to those cars and most people end up getting rid of cars because the repair costs are getting too high.
Some folks seem to almost have a religion about buying used cars. The one relatively low mileage used car I bought as an adult ended up with a lot of maintenance bills for whatever reason. I also had really bad luck with a new Dodge but my other new car purchases have all provided a pretty good lifetime of service. One of my current cars is a 1997 Honda Del Sol and it's still going strong at 160,000 miles.
Yeah. I'm always surprised at how much hassle people are willing to put up with for their cars. I very much look at them as transportation appliances. I'm an ideal consumer for self-driving cars. There's really very little about driving that I actually enjoy, so I'm simply not very tempted to go out and buy a great driver's car or an expensive weekend track car or something.
People just have different tolerances for things I guess. I just have very little tolerance for times when my car goes bad and for wasting time at the dealership. There's other stuff I'd much rather be doing than going through the hassle of buying a car or getting one repaired. So I seek out the cheapest, most reliable car that offers a reasonable level of comfort I can find.
My parents apparently have made the equation work for them to go to a car dealership once a year or so and spend time having one of their cars in the shop every few months for this or that minor thing. All so they can save a few thousand dollars on the sticker price. Once I got out on my own and had to deal with that on my own, I couldn't make it work, so I don't mess around with it.
New doesn't necessarily mean "more reliable", but a make/model (of any sort) with a multi-year track history of ultra high reliability puts you statistically in the game to have a trouble free car.
I have a 1998 Honda Civic Sedan which other than an oil change and tuneup, has been running fine. More than once people have asked me if I was interested in selling it most likely due to how reliable these cars are.
You could buy a car for $2000 to $3000, drive it for 6 months and sell them for more. Or buy one for $4000 to $5000, drive it for 2 years then sell it for $3000 without a sweat.
These Uber-models are great, and I would love to Uber/Lyft/.... everywhere, but they are costly and I do not know what people mean when they say "average" driver in X city.
I honestly think to get from point A to B, a used car will do the job just fine, sounds pretty good from what you've described.