Your 17 and in college and need a reliable car.

Buy a 96-00 Civic and drive it and enjoy good gas mileage, a/c, and not being broken down constantly. Got my '00 Hatch for a decent price and its a nice car, for an econo mobile, I might throw on a small turbo just to give it a little more balls but thats it.

Think about reliability if thats what you need, reliability > going fast, especially if your in college and you don't have the money to spend on upgrading/repairing a car.