Moose, I thought you were comparing performance, lol, sorry.
Pam, I hate (no offense) those girls that get these stupidly huge SUVs and scream at people to get out of their way because they "own the road". That's the cause of many accidents up here, woman with giant SUVs go crazy with rage and smash people. A few months ago, we were on the highway, and this woman was screaming at us to get out of the way, and she tried to run us off the road (we were on the left lane [the fast lane, Paul], and she was in the middle pushing into our lane, pushing us into the grass median). I get my permit in 1.5 weeks! YAY! Hey Shapeshifter, how hard and how much training do you have to do to get a license? I know it's a million time harder to get one in Germany than in the US. In the US, you can crash on your driver's test and still get your license. I know this girl that crashed 3 separate times in a driver's training car, and she still got her license...and she's crashed 3 MORE times since then, yet still has her license.
Editted:
What about the Mitsubishi Lancer? At most $16,000. But it's not too fast, 120hp, that's like my car. But it looks cool, you'll have enough money afterwards to upgrade the engine with mods.
I just read some review on the Acura RSX, and they say "Pros, youthful styling, cons, unexpectedly bad performance". It may look good, but it's low quality. The American version of the Lancer is low quality too. I just say go with the Benz. Or if you want to take out a loan..., you can get a new BMW Z3...$31,000.