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Toyota, Honda, Nissan. They run for many miles without needing much maintenance at all. It will be a very rare thing for a vehicle made by these guys during those years - to ever end up stranded because of any mechanical problem.
I buy old used Japanese vehicles, run them for around 6 years or up to around 300K, then get another one. They're still running fine when I sell them. The only thing happening is body parts start to go - windows may not want to work anymore, air conditioning fails, that sort of thing. But, they still run great.
I'm driving a 2005 Nissan Sentra which was purchased new in the fall of '04 (123,500 miles). My neighbor drives a late nineties model of the same car, my nephew's driving my Dad's '05 Nissan Altima; I see my model (produced from 2001-2006, I believe) out and about quite frequently. It's been well-maintained; outside of a few body condition and other issues that seem to be common for this car (beginnings of rust on a quarter panel and under the running boards, CD player will not eject a CD, sometimes takes a few turns of the key to get started), it's not cost me much outside of usual maintenance, tires and replacement of parts that had reached the end of their useful lives. The car (knock on wood) has never left me stranded even in my daily city driving and many long distance trips. If you can find a single-owner, well-maintained (with service records) Nissan, I'd say go for it.
1990 GMC Sierra 1500. Good old half ton PU truck. Stay away from TPI injection and go throttle body because they're very easy to diagnose and work on.
Can't beat a simple design. These trucks are popular and every parts store around has tons of cheap inventory on the shelf.
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