Im 16 and looking for a car ?which is best?

I've read so many articles, and none of them good about the jeep cherokee. They have chronic starting problems, clutch and transmission problems as well. I know you are looking for probably 4wd due to the harsh fall and winter climate. My first car was a 1952 VW Beetle. My dads 4wd jeep constantly got stuck in the mud and my little 4 cyl. bug pulled his truck out of the mud more times than I can count and snow too. I bought it because it was 400.00 and thats all I had and i drove that car non stop being a teenager for pennies. I had very little money, yet due to it's very frugal use of fuel, I never ran out of money to get to town and that was the point. Having money left over. It seldom had to be fixed even tho it was 17 years old and had 300,000 miles on it. What a little work horse. I'm not advising you to buy a bug, I'm just saying sometimes you get more than you pay for and sometimes, you pay an awful lot for something that has to be repaired constantly and you don't have a dime left at that point to go do the things you wanted a car for to begin with. I'm a truck lover and always have been. My son bought a 4wd ford and it lived in the shop and it was brand new fortunately. They never could make the 4wd work like it was supposed to, so we traded it in. I hear Toyota is making a very dependable 4wd model now. You might check into those. Dependability outweighs coolness everytime. 13 kids in my family, we all had cars, mine was way cheaper and certainly not in the cool department, but while my siblings cars sat in the yard awaiting them to find the money to fix them or chronically in the shop, I was always off in town cruising around, seeing friends, in the ugliest car in america. I felt far more cool having something to depend on than my other siblings with their cool expensive gas hogs they couldn't afford to drive or keep running. the bigger the motor in them, the more the auto insurance is going to cost you and if its "red" they will charge you more. Study's have proven people who buy RED vehicles tend to always speed, take unnessary chances on the road and are more prone to CAUSING accidents. So keep this in mind when auto shopping. Being 16 your insurance will already be outrageous, but if you buy a super jacked up higher truck, that will cost a lot more too. The more cool you try to be, its going to cost you big time in very real money. I drive a 4 cyl. isuzu hombre, no 4wd , its white which is the most visible color after dark to help prevent "others" from hitting you. Dark colors tend to blend into the dark road colors as well and frankly you seem invisible as a result. Its like camo in the forest. Being visible is very important. You may be a very good driver, but the rest of the world, is busy playing with their cell phones and texting while driving, playing with the car stereo and not keeping their eyes on the road and will wipe out your car. WEll you are insured you aren't worried right? Wrong, to make them pay up, you have to sue them, your car in the mean time will stay crippled and broken for 3 to 6 months awaiting insurance companies to finally settle a claim so you can at last get your car fixed or get a check to buy another and there you sit. Forget cool. Cool is a death trap. Go for dependability. My Hombre is a great and economical little truck, gets me anywhere I want to go, but horrible in snow. I haven't had any mud problems at all with it, but it just doesn't do well at all on icy roads. But I'm in NC and we don't own snow chains or snow tires here. We got our first snow last year for the first time in 6 years. We used to get 5 to 6 snows a year but global warming has knocked that out. None the less, i was stuck again in my own yard and it took me 2 days to shovel my way out. Try Toyota. Mazda owners are happy as long as its fair weather, but otherwise, they aren't too happy. Good luck on your search. If you are buying a used vehicle, pay the money and use "car facts" to check for previous wrecks which once repaired you can't tell they've been wrecked before. But once that frame has been bent, all kinds of cronic internal problems begin and thats usually when people get rid of a car to buy a new one. There isn't a car salesman born you can trust. So just block out any blah blah blah coming out of their mouths and get the real scoop online. Ask for the VIN number and thats all you need to check out its history. Bring your parents with you, dads especially are experienced with salesman BS and know how to listen to motor sounds with a more trained ear. When we are young we are so excited about getting a car, we'll take anything. But thats the worst thing you can do. Let somebody less excited help you pick something that is going to stay running so you can do what you bought a car to do......get to town, school, jobs, hang outs, etc.