When I started looking for a new car, I was definitely leaning toward a Honda Civic EX coupe. I've had great experience with the Honda I still own (a '98 CR-V EX with 188K on it and only the things you would expect to replace with a vehicle that old), and I felt alot of brand loyalty to Honda because of that. So, the Civic was the only other car I test drove.
I also did alot of car shopping online. I looked at the Ford Fusion and the Mazda 3 and Mazda 6. Earlier in the process, I was giving Toyota a serious look, but when their acceleration problems went public, I shied away.
So after driving the Civic, I went to Suzuki's website to look at the SX4, which had caught my attention sometime last year. When the Suzuki website loaded, I saw the Kizashi, and I think it was love at first sight.
I found a Suzuki dealer near me, did lots of reading on Car and Driver, and mostly Edmunds.com, to find what they were selling for with their "TMV Report" feature. Once I saw the car in person, and drove one, I was hooked. I feel I am getting a more high-end feel out of a reasonably priced car. Granted, I did spend more than I would have on a Civic EX, but I could have gotten the base model or one step up (the S or SE respectively), for about the same price. I decided to step up to the SLS because I was able to catch a "You Pay What We Pay" sale at the dealer, so I got it for just under 24,000.
I am going now to write a post about my first impressions, so if you want to know more, you can look there.
Diana