Buy an American car under 10 years old with an appropriate mileage. A Chevvy with 90,000 on it will last you forever and should, sadly, anything go wrong with it, American cars can be fixed for the price of a beer (ish... by that I mean every roadside garage has the parts and, technically, they are dinosaurs. No computer analysis or fault diagnosis at £30/hour... Volvo dealers take note... grrrr !)
If you can stretch to $2000, buy a more upmarket car - Cadillac or Oldsmobile. They tend to have been looked after, built like brick ****-houses and just don't go wrong in the important areas. When you leave you won't lose more than a couple of hundred dollars on it.
European cars.... status symbols, parts imported, costly to fix, more expensive to insure. I would avoid VW, BMW, anything like that.
The Chevvy Caprice or something like a 1990 Cadillac Sedan are your friends
Ignore the wails about fuel prices in the USA currently - you still won't believe your wallet, even though fuel has doubled in Florida over the last year or so !
If you must be more fuel efficient, Japanese cars are very popular, but (in my experience) very shagged when used. They just don't seem to stand up to the climate as well as US cars.