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Buying any car that gets less then 30MPG is just a bad idea.
When oil prices come back or the money continues to run out you will regret that vehicle.
Unless you have clear commercial needs it is just wrong regardless of the up front cost.
But there really are no good cars. They just don't design them to hit a real fuel number but still be useful. They are all designed to pass people at 80 going up hill into the wind.
We need people movers. Heck you could have gotten a sprinter van with 3 rows of seats for a little more and had way better gas millage. But maybe those aren't legal in cali....