Thanks to those who have responded so far. I will explore the TSX option some more, although it still may be out of my price range.

I'm really too lazy to learn to drive a manual transmission car at this stage in my life, even though it will open up to me some knowledge that other folks I know who have or have had these cars have. TheOtherDave(tm), it's not my cassette player that's giving me trouble; it's my CD player. In recent years, I had hardly even used the cassette player because so much of my music is now on CD. A few books I've wanted to read in this time period were only available in local libraries in audio cassette format, rather than as books, so when I checked them out, I played them in the car's cassette player.

In fact, I priced the twenty-oh-eight TSX on Acura's web site. It's a little pricier than what I had hoped to pay now (with a few home appliances needing replacement soon, plus the need/desire to buy an HDTV in the same time period). In the build-a-car section, I left off two things I would have liked to have had - the GPS system and, mainly for playing library books that are only available in cassette format, the cassette player - just to keep the price within a reasonable range for me.

Switching to a manual transmission could possibly save me a few dollars, but I don't want to learn on such a pricey new car. After 37 years of driving only automatic transmission cars, this would be a major change to have to make. (I doubt State Farm would want me to do this either, even at the higher rate I'll now be paying - although the "hit" won't be as bad as it could have been since I've yet to drop collision and comprehensive from my soon-to-be 10-year-old car.)

I've posted about my CD player problems in the Audio & Security forum, where I've gotten a few answers.