Stay away from the Pontiac Vibe they are discontinuing several models this year and will probably drop the whole line next year. I haven't heard if Toyota is doing the same with the Matrix.
I hope that's not true. They discontinued the GT, but I can't blame them - that was an incredibly goofy attempt to compete with the Mazda3.
Wierdly, I just got rid of an '89 Nissan Maxima myself and bought myself an '05 Focus. I actually got the sedan model, but I'm really happy with the amount of space for the price and gas mileage, etc. My wife, my brother, and I, along with my 7 month old baby just took a road trip to Atlanta for Thanksgiving, and we all had reasonable room for sleeping, etc. My $.02