Okay so your price range for the car is $7,500 - $10,000 and then you are willing to budget $6,000 a year for the insurance, repairs, maintenance, registration and tags?
From my experience, the customization of the vehicle gets you attention OR the brand name of the vehicle, or BOTH. You can tell a chick you drive a BMW or Benz, which are brand names, and that will get you some attention. Or, you can drive a mid-sized Sedan but customize it, and the customization gets you attention.
$6,000 a year budgeted for a car that only cost you $7,500 is very high. My additional questions are:
- How old of a year model do you want? Would you be willing to go back 7 years or only 5 years or only 3 years?
- What's the max amount of miles you want on the car?
- Are you willing to do customization or just mainly deal with how it comes out of the dealership?
Right now your range is too broad and there's too many additional questions before I can make a suggestion.
For example, in my area on Auto Trader, you can get an older Benz, the Used 2006 Mercedes-Benz C280, with about 120k miles on it, for about $8,500. You could then just customize the hell out of it. You can then brag that you drive a Benz and have the customization.
Now I would never do that (in the example). I would never buy a car that's over 2-3 years old just to have a brand name. Me personally, I like buying cars that are within $12k - $18k and are no more than 2 years old at the time of purchase with no more than 30k miles, then I customize them with another $2,500 - $3,000.
I have posted my Dodge Charger and Dodge Avenger before. I had my Charger since 2011 but it got flooded in 2014, when I had to hurry up and grab the Avenger as it was in the Deep Water Blue Pearl color I like. I'm holding the Avenger until early 2017 when I'm going to get the 2016 Dodge Charger:
http://s1299.photobucket.com/user/Tenacity99/slideshow/Dodge Avenger SXT/Dodge Charger SXT
http://s1299.photobucket.com/user/Tenacity99/slideshow/Dodge Avenger SXT