Casually looking for new DD/beater

I'm honestly surprised by the lack of BMW E46/E39 wagon suggestions, does GRM have something against BMW wagons or something?

Get a 528i/5, they're not terribly hard to find and they're well-built cars. You can easily find them with all sorts of creature comforts like heated seats, and all of them come with power everything and good heat/AC, so you'll be comfortable year-round. The 528i/5 tourings can easily get gas mileage in the 20's.

I daily drive a 540it which has a bit more power but is auto-only (unless you do a swap). My gas mileage is quite terrible (16mpg on average) but having a 300hp V8 wagon comes at a cost.

V70R would seem to fit the bill rather nicely, 300hp, awd, available 6 speed.

S70/850 is really rather nice as well and holy crap are they cheap these days. I've had two 850s, an n/a 5 speed sedan and a turbo sedan, plus my dad had an auto n/a wagon, and between the two of us put probably >150k on these cars with minimal drama. Comfy without being too soft, sporty enough, the best seats ever, and even the sedans are rather capacious for their footprint. Turbos respond well to mods and can make 300+whp pretty easily. Downside is you can't get the turbo/5 speed combo from the factory in the 850 (S70 I think you can) but the swap supposedly isn't too hard from what I recall. 

That said, great as the Volvos were, I loved my e36 much more. I'd go e46 wagon, as that's pretty much my dream attainable DD.

SAABs (I have a 2009 9-3 2T auto, the only bummer) just work pretty damn well. If you can live with gas gauges that will fail and are prepared to deal with the occasional window solenoid failure, they're nearly bulletproof (I'm talking 2003 and up so you don't have the DI cassette failure) if you feed them good oil (I use Mobil 1 0-40). I've put 120,000 km on mine in four years with only the above mentioned problems, oil changes, a battery replacement, and two brake jobs done by me (had the window fixed by my SAAB guy, am living with the dead fuel gauge).

They also seem to be pretty impervious to rust; a big deal up here in Ontario. And they zip along pretty nice. If you spend any time on the SAAB forums, you'll find that the wheel hp before someone goes tune happy is pretty close to what they were rated at the crank. I have not tested mine, but it feels quicker than a 210 crank HP 3600 pound car should.

curtis73 said:

The 9-3 tips some of the right boxes but all I know about Saab is that its dead and was dying since 1985.  Everything else is just a slippery-looking GM.  Clarkson hates them which means they might actually be good.  Can you Saab lovers explain to me why they're a good choice?

The reason I thought of them is that the 2000s era 9-3 is closely related to the Chevy Malibu of the same era - but with a stick shift, turbo, and more interesting suspension calibration. So it ought to have GM parts availability, but with more upscale looks and interesting performance. And they're cheap now.