The top 12 used vehicles most likely to sell for less than $10,000

The average new car in the United States commanded a price of about $32,000 last month — a jump of nearly 4 percent from a year earlier, according to market trackers at TrueCar. More than ever, a new car or truck has become a luxury purchase; these days, even the cheapest new cars — say a Nissan Versa Note, Chevy Spark or Mitsubishi Mirage — start around $13,000.

That's been a boon to the used-car market, where used car prices have risen as well; the median second-hand vehicle now sells for about $16,000. But what if you're someone who needs a vehicle and has $10,000 or less to spend?

For those of us not lucky enough to stumble onto a cream-puff $100 SUV, the analysts at Iseecars.com decided to answer that question by analyzing some 30 million used-car listings to determine which models were the most likely to have a window price of $10,000 or less. The results were not what you might expect: