I say a the probe. My mom bought one brand new in 89 and 17 years later it was still driving strong enough that my sister was able to take it as her first car. I personally have had nothing but bad luck with Hondas. Every single Honda I've ever owned has broken down, I'm not exaggerating that.
ford. never buy a honda they are in fact a money pit
Obviously the one you like not the ones that complete strangers on the internet like.
Ford
If all else equal, go with lowest mileage on odometer.
Honda - always go for Honda. Strong, sturdy engines, they can just keep going if taken care of. I have a friend who has a 1989 Honda Accord with over 400,000 miles on it and that engine is still chugging along.
**EDIT: Wow what's with the down rates?
Well let me put this more into perspective then...
I had a Ford, actually two. One was a truck (F-150) worked great! No complaints there. Ford makes a damn-good truck. I also had a Ford Focus which was just a total heap of crap for a consumer car. It went in for many repeat repairs if I couldn't fix it myself, which was quite often because of their sorry-***, cramped engine design (it was a 1998 model)
I then moved on and went with a Nissan (350z / 280zx) two cars. AWESOME CARS - holy cow! Strong, sturdy and FAST! I still own both, especially the 280zx (Which at the time was called DATSUN).
I also own a Honda Civic commuter car. Also extremely reliable, sturdy, easy maintenance and just a good, plain all-around decent vehicle. No bells, no whistles, it just gets the job done and keeps working decently.
For the guy who said "HONDAS ARE MONEY PITS" must have bought a piece of crap to begin with because I've had nothing but a good time with mine, so have my friends, I've heard nightmares about owning Ford vehicles and I too was a Ford vehicle owner for quite some time and regret forking over just about the same price as I paid for the car in just repairs over the years.
So that's my experience, you don't have to take my word for it, just know that the asian markets (japanese, korean) cars really had to try to make a DECENT car in order to survive in an american market, so they basically perfected a cheap and decent commuter car, because if they didn't we wouldn't have import cars, now would we?
Ford used to be SO Bad in their engineering and production people invented clever acronyms like "FORD, flip that backwards (DROF), it means: Driver Return On Foot"
I need to make a desicion right now. Ford probe gt or honda prelude which is better?!?!
