Buying a car - Part 1

I decided that I would do a few posts about buying the recent new car. Hopefully it will help people out if you are here in the US with some links. It recently came up that I needed to purchase a new car. My wife's 2002 Chevrolet Venture had 97,500 miles on it and we were concerned about turning the odometer over 100,000 since it looks bad when trying to sell it. We have not had any mechanical problems with the car, but it is only front wheel drive and my wife wanted more traction. We both had our jobs during the new car process. My wife's job was to tell me a series of things she wanted in the car and to tell me how much money we could spend on it. My job was to research what were our best options, show them to my wife for approval and then negotiate the deal in the end.

My wife's requirements for her new car were:
Good warranty
All-wheel drive or four-wheel drive
Ability to sit seven people
Neither a minivan (she no longer wants to look like a soccer mom) nor a full-sized beast like an Excursion or a Suburban because she wants to be able to park in lots

With the list of requirements in hand, I set about my work to find what could fit the bill. My information on how I did that in the next installment...