From owners of these vehicles what do you love and hate about your vehicle?

So, I've been looking into purchasing a second car for quite a while now… My wife and I are looking into compact and subcompact sedans due to out need for four doors, better fuel economy, and our want to keep things smaller.

Chevy Sonic
Chevy Cruze
Ford Focus
Honda Civic
Honda Fit
Hyundai Elantra
Kia Rio
Mazda 3
Subaru Impreza (wagon)
Toyota Corolla
Toyota Prius C
Volkswagen Jetta

I know this is quite a list, and we hope to downsize before we get serious! I'd like to know how some owners of these vehicles feel about their purchase or lease, the pros, the cons - maybe to help alleviate some personal concerns and enlighten the concerns not available to us just yet. Please respond with the year and mileage of your current vehicle, as well as all the gritty and euphoric details. Also, I'm not looking for reviews from people who do not own one of these vehicles, respectively.

I can tell you about a few. I bought my son a 2010 Mazda 3. The only trouble e've had is par of the electronics to the steering broke, and it cost me a grand to get it fixed. If it happened 2 months earlier it would have been covered. When we were going to buy it, we also test drove a Civic. The Civic was an absolute dog compared to the 3, and was very loud. Y son's 3 is a 5 speed manual, and it's actually quite fun to drive. Mazda is very good at building good driving dynamics into a car. If you see cars as appliances, the Civic might be bette, r but if you enjoy driving, the 3 is hands down better. He gets about 32 MPG all the time.

We have a 2014 Impreza; we traded a Forrester in on it In the winter, r it's a tank, absolutely fantastic in he snow. It's very good in nasty weather in general, very solid. We got it with a 5 speed manual (we like manuals), and she gets an average of about 32, as high as 34 on highway trips. Not great, but fantastic for an AWD car. It's very quiet, has a nice blue tooth interface, and is quite roomy.

My son's Girlfriend has a 2008 Jetta. It's loaded, leather, heated seats, sunroof, etc. Very nice classy car. It has a 5 cylinder to it's quite quick, and it also has a 5 speed automatic. My biggest complain is the mileage, she only gets about 23-25 all the time. I'm not sure if she dogs it or not. I suspect the newer ones get better mileage, of course, the diesels do.

I test drove a Fit, 5 speed manual. It was run and remarkably roomy, but it was a few years old, and read that th crash protection was very week. As the car was to get my son to and from school, which entails a lot of highway miles, I wanted something with good crash stats. Maybe newer ones are better.

If I were going to buy a new small car tomorrow, I'de get either a Soul or a Mazda 3 hatchback. The 3 would be more fun, the Souls has more room.

The toyotas are the only vehicles to even warrant looking at ( my opinion ) ; all the rest is junk

Stick with Honda and Toyota for best reliability. But the sub-compacts are not very safe -- too small, don't survive well in an accident with a bigger vehicle.

I'm impressed with the Toyota Corolla because of so many have them, they are reliable, sharp and have heard mostly good about them. The Chevy Cruze is awesome to my nephew and his girlfriend each have one and love them. I test drove a Cruze and wanted to keep it but I wasn't in the market to trade up. The Cruze that I drove had the powerful 1.4 liter turbo engine and fun and easy to drive 6 speed manual transmission which I HIGHLY RECOMMEND super fun to drive and awesome gas mileage!

I have a 2015 Mazda 3 i sport and i love it my i have only 2 complains is their is no back up camara in the i sport model you got to get it in the i gt or the s gt and all the 2015 models come standard with push start but if you get the i sport you still have to take the throb out of your pocket to unlock it but you can pay to get keyless entry but other then that you get use to where the unlock button is so you can just reach in your pocket but other then that the car is fun to drive and i love it i get 31 city and 41 hwy i get average 32 overall but i like to zoom zoom around the corners lol what mazda known for and i test drove a corolla their nice i liked it but my wife liked the camry instead a corolla is just a smaller version of a camry like a mazda 3 is smaller version of a mazda 6 and i heard the chevy cruze is good but never drove one i use to have a 2005 Malibu it was a good car great on gas