About the hybrid cars, the St. Pete times just did an article on them and they're not very economical over the long run. Let's say you buy one for the "environment" because you belong to PETA or something. The carbo footprint over the life of the vehicle is more than a Hummer. Why you ask? because you have to change outt he nicad batteries about every 3-5 years, they really can't recycle them so they have to be disposed of by some other means, which is eco talk for hanging around a land fill forever because they don't deteriorate. OK, so you buy one for the mileage, you'll pay, depending on the model, $2500-$5000 for the hybrid, if gas is approximately $3.75 per gallon, it will take approximately 10 years to pay for the car, and that doesn't include the cost of having to buy a new battery every 3-5 years at approximately $3500- $4000. So at least for now the hybrids are still losers, however, flex fuel vehicles do offer some advantages, since there is about 10-15% ethanol in almost all fuel these days the flex cars can use this to their best advantage. Gas only cars can use it but will not see any advantage andpossibly will lose some mileage and power (my 97 F150 does this). Even though ethanol (E85) is not around too much yet, it will be shortly, the flex fuel cars can take the best advantage of this, even though the mileage will be slightly lower than when using gasoline.
All that being said, America makes some fine automobiles, and with the economy slow as it is, I'd buy American over anything else, my good old F150 has over 210,000 miles on it most of it over 80mph towing a race car. I don't see too many ricers doing that, (it gets 19-20mpg on the highway still).
I'd look at a Ford Taurus
Ford Vehicle Showroom
You can get these in all wheel drive if I'm not mistaken.
or..
a Ford Escape
the city admin uses these and they run the crap out of them.