Any suggestions will be governed by your own preferences (e.g.RWD vs FWD) and the price your willing to pay for a car. It will also depend, in part, on whether you are expecting to do some or all of your own maintenace and whether you would liek to perform any upgrades. You also mentioned that it will be your wife's car. Any rug rats involved? Planning any long trips with the car? You get the idea, no? Elaborate some, please....

Two that come immediately to mind would be a 940T or 960 wagon (RWD). I think there is a general consensus that the 4 cly. w/o turbo in the 700/900 series chassis produces one slow dog. Both the Turbo and inline 6 cly. 960 are several degrees different than what you've driven, it woud seem. This is especialy true of the 960. There is a lot of discussion surrounding this model, but the 97/98 model years (V90) are outstanding cars with lots of bells and whistles. You could find one of these with less than 100K on it for around 15-18K. I love my 92, however.
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John Shatzer, '92 965 @100K; one of a few still in captivity.