Wife has been doing some window shopping. Her car just passed 9 years and isn't new anymore. No plans to get rid of, but, as we all know: you can be the world's best driver, and that won't stop someone else from destroying your car. Or from having a repair that just isn't economically feasible.
So she's been looking at Camry as that has served her well. She found out that the LE Hybrid comes with the preferred 16" wheels; all other models come with larger & more expensive tires. [I looked it up and the 17's actually weren't that bad, but are still $20 more per tire for the RT43's that we run.] Looking at a Corolla apparently the manual transmission model has 18" wheels which is a no-go. She wants a manual transmission, but if she can't have one, then she might as well go with whatever will have the cheapest 10 year cost. Tires only last 40k for us, which can be a set per year, so... you go argue with her about it.
My thinking is, a Corolla may cost more on insurance and be worse on the highway. But I'm not sure if that is true or not? That was true in the past, but the future keeps changing on us. Quick look shows it's almost the same size as my Camry, maybe even larger now.
Again, we're not buying, and during this time we're not about to go out and test drive for the heck of it. Just straight discussion. Not sure if I can sway her towards much else, we're kinda soured on Honda, iffy on Kia/Hyundai, unsure on German (I'd be allowed to have one but she saw the amount of work my last VW required). It's kinda these two or none at all in her mind.
FWIW I've been pushing for a 90's Miata for her but haven't gotten anywhere on that one... she's fixated on having four doors. I keep pointing out that if we go used & old, we'd have plenty of money to fix it up--and there's the flaw, she is not interested in that.