If you had to buy ONE used car in 2026 with your own money, what would it be and why?

45 years of experience with Honda has me coining the phrase, "If it spins, and Honda sells it, buy that one." There's a reason the Honda Accord leads ALL other cars in appearances on Car & Driver's Annual 10 Best Automobiles list - it is. A well-maintained Honda will go 200K miles. No other car maker can reliably say that. I took one of mine to 385K miles. On the day I got rid of it, it didn't burn a drop of oil and still got 34 MPGs. I had to get rid of it because the plastic gewgaws in the cabin started snapping off in my hand, like the turn signal (not required in the USA), and the rearview. And the rubber seals here and there really pushed me, as the driveway started accumulating stains when the seals started failing and making a mess. If I needed something I could count on for a decade, I'd be looking at 10-year-old Accords and Civics with 100K miles, manual tranny, and a believably good, preferably documented, maintenance history.