At the beginning of this year, I decided it was finally time to buy a new vehicle. For the past six years, I had been driving the same 1998 Mercury Mountaineer. Although it had over 100,000 miles on it, I had taken good care of it over the years, so it was still running quite well. However, because it was a V-8, it was burning a hole in my pocket every time that I needed to fill it up, so I decided it was time to look for something that was more fuel efficient.

As I was driving my gas guzzler to work one day, I noticed a 2007 Honda Civic at a dealer’s lot. It caught my eye, so I went and talked to the dealer about it. The price was under $18,000, and it had less than 20,000 miles. When I pulled up the Carfax report, it said that it had only been owned by a major rental car company. Although I was unsure about purchasing a rental car, I eventually decided to go for it, and have been enjoying a much more gas friendly vehicle ever since!