So far I've driven the vehicle a bit over 6500 miles since I purchased it, in almost exactly six months. In the six months, I've had to put new tires on the car, and fix a fairly major emissions issue, which has cost approximately $2000 all told. Based on my depreciation estimates, the car will have paid for itself in approximately April 2012 at this point.
One thing is certain, the new tires were the best $1000 I've spent on the car thus far. While I wasn't thrilled with the prospect of having to spend money on anything (I am a poor college student, after all) and was not thrilled that my local shop only had Goodyear tires in stock when I went to get my tires (up until this point I've only ever purchased Michelin tires) I've been satisfied with every aspect of the new ones thus far. Hopefully they will maintain my enthusiasm, however, they will need to last the same number of miles as the last set of Michelin tires I bought, which still had plenty of tread after putting 60,000 miles on them.
I've uncovered a few downsides with this particular car, several of which I've already fixed. First, with a CD Player and no tape deck, I wasn't able to hard-wire my iPod into the stereo. Crutchfield sells an adapter for about $60 which makes it possible. I bought and installed the adapter in March, which works perfectly.

Watch for some interesting road trips in August. I'm working on putting a few together right now, however, I'm still not entirely sure where I'll be off to yet.
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