Unfortunately, many german makes have gone severely downhill in the last 3 years. I wonder if the 'unification' has anything to do with that. Mercedes management types were quoted saying they had cut their quality control costs to the bone as they felt "the quality was baked into the processes and the people at this point". Their plunge from top 5 to bottom 5 in reliability suggests a little further baking was warranted.
My dad had a passat, and it was a piece of crap too. He finally got rid of it when some engine control dingy died at 40k miles for a $900 cost after he spent over a grand on some fairly pedestrian maintenance that would have cost a lot less on most cars.
In the toyota and honda model lines, you'll find a few that share quite a bit of engineering with the lexus and acura's. The camry and mid-rage lexus lines share a lot. The avalon and larger lexus' also do. A honda pilot and Acura MDX are quite close in heritage with the pilot costing a lot less. Look for those model parallels, buy a loaded camry or avalon vs an ES300 or LS430, save a bundle. Of course, you dont get the extra $10-15k 'cachet'.
Sounds like you like the sporty sedan? Check out the newer Infiniti Q45's, since they went from the 'american' styling to the more streamlined teardrop shape in 2002. Nice, 340hp, reliable, and frequently very inexpensive for the type of car. And the dealers kiss your behind. Or a Camry Solara convertible? An Acura 3.5RL? You can find 3 year old Q45's and 3.5RL's with 20-40k miles on them from the low 20's to the mid 30's; they're in the 50-60k range new.
The solara isnt an expensive car and holds it value, has a good resale too. The Q45 and 3.5RL will be cheap to buy but there isnt a big resale market, so its not a good car to own for 2-3 years and then sell; they're own until they die car.
The "anything japanese' idea falls a little short too...many Mazda and Mitsubishi models have terrible relibility ratings, although I owned an Isuzu Trooper and a Mazda Miata and had no problems with them at all.
As a last comment, dont buy that '3000 mile oil change' thing. That was a marketing constuction created and propogated by Jiffy Lube to double their revenues. Modern motor oil and its additive packages doesnt START breaking down until at least 5000 miles, and most quality oils in most engines in most applications will still be very viable through the manufacturers 6000-7500 mile recommendation. "Its cheap insurance" sounds good, but you're doubling the amount of dirty oil that needs to be recycled. Obviously some applications like diesel engines, turbo's, extensive towing, lots of very short trips, and very high heat opeation might want to make you shorten the oil change times, but I dont think you're going to help yourself much by changing your oil faster than the owners manual tells you to.
