Comfort Levels

Banks use formulas to find acceptable car payments (15 to 20 percent of income) and total debt (38 to 50 percent) and that's why bad credit car loan customers often wind up with a car loan in the $10,000 range (payments of $250 to $280 a month). Banks also won't loan money on cars that are too old (five to eight years) so your assignment is to find the best car for the money in the $10,000 range.

You're in luck. First, statistics show you'll find a lot of KIAs and Suzukis in the special finance field, which is okay considering the Suzuki Grand Vitara in your price range (2003 and 2004 models) earned top reliability ratings at MSN Autos (as did the Kia Sorento).

From Edmunds.com there's a story of editors test-shopping for used family cars. They found Toyota Camrys and Honda Accords to be $3,000 more than the very comparable Mitsubishi Galant or Nissan Altima.

From Consumer Reports, the economy Chevrolet Geo/Prizm
was a joint effort with Toyota and it got rave reliability
ratings. Also scoring well in a recent Consumer
Reports list of top used cars in the $10,000
to $12,000 range -- the 2001 Mazda Protege
and 2000 Toyota Corolla.

J.D. Power's survey of most reliable
used cars (from the 2002 model year,
so they would be in our price range)
included the Buick Century, Mazda
Miata, Chevrolet S-10 pickup truck
and Ford Windstar minivan.

This is just a small sample of the vehicles
to be had in this price range. You can
visit Auto Loan Central for six pages on the
best cars for bad credit customers. Next