The New Beetle was on that list, too, if you didn't give the other cars a look. My grandmother also had a lemon of a Chevy Aveo recently, as well. For buying, though, you wanna do the legwork on the individual car itself once you've figured out what models have solid reliability and what ones to avoid. And by that, I mean taking it to a shop to have it checked out under the hood before you buy it. I didn't do that with mine and you know how it's gone so far.
And thank you for the birthday wishes!