I have a friend who bought an 02 (I think) and he seems pretty happy with it. But then again he's the kind of guy that is usually pretty happy with anything. I casually looked into buying one and from everything I read they seemed to be pretty decent cars. Actually I think what turned me off about them was the high resale value - I *think* you're about right on the used 01 cost, like low 20s.. but I also *think* I remember reading that some people were buying brand new 03s for high 20s.... it seemed silly to be paying $23k for a 2 year old car if I could get a brand new one for $29k. But I might be off by a few thousand $$ on that, it was a few months ago I was looking.
And yes, there have been rumors of an is430, which will probably knock down the prices of used ones if it actually comes out.
Edit: Yeah, I checked autotrader real quick, and the going rate for a 2001 (w/about 40k miles) is an asking price of about $22,000... and there was at least one 2003 w/10k miles - asking price of $28,000. To me that seems a little out of whack, it seems like the 01s should be worth more like $19-20k. Plus I *think* my buddy said that there were very few options packages, which works in your favor as a buyer because it means that most of the used cars will have similar feature sets. (although not necessarily identical)
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