Austarion

I need a new daily driver.

I'm thinking a Mazda 3 or possibly an RX8 (I saw a late 2003 one with low kms for a bit over $30k the other day). A mate rates his 2007 MX5 too...if I could find a slightly older one for a good price, I might be tempted.

Anything bad about these cars? Anything to look out for? Any recommendations for a decent driver under 10 years old?

Newer offerings by Mazda are cool. I have read that running costs are high though.

One car that impresses me for value and cool factor is the Nissan Skyline 350GT. They appear on J-spec regularly
between the 21K-30oddK mark landed and complied (2003-2006 models)
Or there's always a local import dealer with the added profit/commission...

Half the cost of 350Z!

buy a shit box so you 'want' to get the Starion fixed asap and you will enjoy it more once you do.

Depends what you want, the way things are going the mazda 3 and miata mx5 would be the best for fuel costs.

I've had my 04/05 (12/2004 build) Mazda3 SP23 for 3 months now and am very happy with it.
They are extremely well appointed, plenty of safety equipment and with the 2.3ltr they've got plenty of go.
I mainly do short squirts to work so I can't really give an opinion of fuel economy, but I didn't buy for that reason.
I was pretty lucky with this one; dropped into a dealer to look at one but it had been sold and this one had just been traded,
it only had 22K on the clock and they gave it a full 20K service as part of the deal.
Much nicer to drive than my hulking Nissan Patrol.

How tall are you? Stay away from the MX5 if you're over 5'6" And don't hope to ever carry anything bigger than a drill in the boot. It's next to useless.