[R.W.Dale]

I drive a Saturn I picked up only because it was cheap and checked the correct equipment boxes of manual trans + 4cyl

I think the sweet spot in economy is a car new enough to be OBD2 and old enough to be a tinfoil deathtrap in a crash. This realistically puts you in roughly a 10 year range from 96 to 06 give or take.

As long as you avoid anything Mitsubishi or Chrysler Corp it’s actually a pretty good bet that a 4cyl 5 speed car will be a fairly reliable machine

Those are your criteria 4cyl 5 speed, late 90’s to early aughties. One car that strikes me as slept on as a small fuel efficient sedan that’s still cheap and doesn’t have a cult following is the B15 Nissan Sentra