As many of you know, we have had our share of vehicle problems (at one time, all 4 of my vehicles broke down in one week), and we are needing to get ourselves a new or used family vehicle. We have been borrowing my parent's 2000 Passat, so we have discovered that we can easily get away with a small 4 door car as a family car.

I am leaning for a low mileage used car, 4 door, gets good gas mileage, possibly a wagon or hatchback, and something that is known for reliability. We still have the tacoma for camping, snow trips, etc... and the 4runner will eventually get fixed, so I don't have to worry about this being used for anything other than hauling us and maybe some luggage around. Any ideas/suggestions would be greatly appreciated since I have not paid attention to these types of vehicles in a long time.

I would also be interested in new vehicles, but we are also going to possibly start the process of looking to buy a house, so I am leary of a big car payment. If I did go new, I might lean more towards hybrids like the new big prius. Anyways, any ideas on new would be helpful too.

We are kind of on a time crunch, so I greatly appreciate any advice. We are using a rental for right now and low on browsing time. I am super busy with work, which makes this slightly less painful, but it also means that we don't have a lot of free time to be looking, not to mention, dragging two kids around car lots is not that fun. We don't have a lot of free cash to buy private party, so we are pretty much stuck with car lots and financing, so any advice on buying used from lots would help too.
Thanks guys!