Used Cars: buying a car, lincoln mark viii, lincoln town car

Question
I am 16 and looking to buy my first car. I want a good size car with decent performance. I have been considering a Lincoln Town Car or a Cadillac. My budget is 3500 and I was wondering what you would recommend? Thanks a lot.
Jerry

Answer
Well there will probably be a lot of people that will disagree with this, but I would not consider a cadillac if it was $350.00.  Now with that being said the STS and SLS are decent cars, but regardless, in that price range you are likely to have problems with the car(engine), and you are very likely to spend more fixing it, then you spent on it.  To put this into more perspective, the shop that I use, which is highly qualified, pretty much told me to never bring them another cadillac....PERIOD!  I would definetly choose the town car over the cadillac, yet the cadillac is probably a lot more on the performance side of things.  And truth be told that lincolns in that price range have been around long enough now, you could tweak with them a little bit to get better performance, like a K&N air filter, a chip, and exhaust.  The 4.6 liter engine in most of the lincolns was in production from 1991 to current years, best of my knowledge.  It has been around a long time, and they use it in other line ups besides the lincoln, they are not hard to work on.  I dont know if you need a 4 door or not, but I can tell you that if I was in your position I would be zooming in on finding a Lincoln Mark VIII.  You should be able to find one in that price range, a 94 to 97 or 98 model.  But those cars are all that, and a box of chocolate.  You would be ultimately impressed if you drove one of those.  In my opinion lincoln has yet to better that car with their newer versions.  I hope you find this helpful, and Happy Holidays.