I'd go with the '97 Mazda myself. 85k is pretty low for that type of car and i'd imagine it would outlive the Park Avenue. Not to mention probably have less mechanical problems and a higher resale value (in case you do sell it in the near future) at that. Most people would say the Park Avenue because technically this IS a PA forum, not to mention a choosing of a "rice burner" or "american car" where most of the biased people will already tell you to buy the PA. But having worked in the car business for the past couple of years, i'd have to go with buying the Mazda. Plus it's the 626 version and not the 323 version....so it has more juice and cool little trinkets to play with!
...as for the "reliability" of the Buick i'd have to say that the engine is it's strongest suit (those 3800 are like rocks) but just about everything else falls apart...haha. I have a '94 Ultra with 67k miles on it (bought it at 44k) and the engine has run flawlessly so far, it's just other things that have gone wrong....especially the electrical. In my case the power windows, electric radio antenna, and windshield wiper motor had to be fixed so far and just last week my ABS and traction control light come on and stay on occasionally while driving meaning i probably have a bad speed sensor somewhere. I'm afraid of someday hearing the dreaded "grinding" noise from under my hood which is a sign that the supercharger is taking a shit. After reading many posts on here about the superchargers going bad on the Park Avenues i came to a raw conclusion that most of them go out around 80-100k and are quite pricey to replace. That's really about the only problem that most people have experienced on their PAs from what i read on these posts. Others will probably tell you different, but that's just my
..... Good luck Zazoo on whatever you do!
