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My mother has a Hungarian(?) built Suzuki Wagon R+ auto which is a great car for older people as it offers easy access, excellent visibility and Japanese reliablilty. You can probably find one for the money you are talking about. I wouldn't do a long journey in it though.
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I hav enever driven an automatic but I have heard very good things about Honda autos although I agree with stunorthants. The reason I beleive they are different is that they make there own and do not buy auto boxes in (will not be true in all cases but is with Honda I believe).
Honda have had some problems with accord autos but seem willing to fix them regardless of the cars age.
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The Rover 416 auto had the Honda engine, unlike the manuals which were all K's
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Agree re the Japanese comment.
One thing to bear in mind is that the mainstream European manufacturers in the main don't sell too many autos so their products aren't as well developed as the Japanese ones which sell by the bucketload (Americans, Aussies, the Japanese themselves, all drive 90% automatic cars). Conversely, if there has traditionally been a weak spot on Japanese cars in the past, it has been the manual gearboxes, for the same reason -- they don't sell as many of 'em. Old Nissan manual boxes were prone to whining and occasionally weak synchromesh as they got older, although they rarely failed as such. Newer ones seem to have sorted this issue out.
Also consider a Korean auto, particularly Hyundai/Kia, reason being that these designs are lifted straight from Mitsubishi so have a similar reliability record, hard as nails in the main.
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"(Americans, Aussies, the Japanese themselves, all drive 90% automatic cars). Conversely, if there has traditionally been a weak spot on Japanese cars in the past, it has been the manual gearboxes, for the same reason -- they don't sell as many of 'em."
I have a Mazda 323 which has a lovely manual box.
Other than that I agree with all the comments above re going Japanese or Korean. I haven't heard any adverse comments about the Honda CVT transmissions in practice. In theory they may not be as good but in practice everyone who has one seems happy with them. I would certainly prefer a Honda CVT transmission to a Ford front wheel drive auto.
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Don't get me wrong expat, I'm not saying that older Jap manual boxes are bad (I have a Nissan with 120K and the manual box, like the engine, is as sweet as a nut), any more than I'm saying that Euro autos are bad. Just that this was an area where traditionally Jap manual boxes haven't been quite as strong as the rest of the car tended to be.
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On reflection, when I say "old" I probably should qualify that; I'm meaning mid-80s here! Probably no worse than any other manual at that time, they all tended to be a bit noisy as I recall.
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