The Vette IS America's sports car, hands down. Performance for dollar is great. (and yes gresch, I have been drinking tonight ).

The Cobalt SS is a good little car too. Otherwise, I prefer everything Ford personally as far as domestic cars are concerned. The Mustang is great for what it is as well.

I actually agree with asawadude and JCL on older BMW's. There are many good older, higher mileage Bimmers out there, but the best ones are the less complicated models with the least amount of electronic gadgets to go bad. My X5 is about to turn 100k runs great, but I did have a bunch of items fixed under warranty. I had two e30's to about 300k miles and I have 290k on my DD e36. The engine in the e36 is still smooth as silk and the driving experience is much better than most new cars under $30k, IMO. Keep in mind that I drive that thing like a dog too and have only replaced the plugs/water pump/beltsand alternator as far as the engine itself is concerned in nearly 300k.

You can keep repair costs down if you are able to do simple repairs yourself. BMW parts are pretty good overall. You typically don't have to repair many items more tham once. Electronic/luxury gadgetry issues are a different story though, so I get what Wagner and JCL are saying.