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To check the battery condition, find a long hill, and climb it with the assist on. The battery indicator should drop smoothly at least until it's below half full. If it goes down just a few bars, then quickly drops to zero, the battery is weak or unbalanced. This isn't a disaster (see other threads here on rebuilding/rebalancing a battery pack), but it should factor into a lower price.
You might get an IMA light doing this. If so, it can be reset by pulling one of the fuses in the driver's footwell (#18, IIRC) and waiting 10 seconds before replacing.
Other than the battery thing, they're pretty dependable cars. Mine's a 2000, bought in '03, now has over 140K miles. The only mechanical work I've done (that wasn't from being rear-ended, or having a deer try to use the hood as a trampoline) was to replace the EGR valve and an oxygen sensor.
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