I'm tellin ya BRI, you should look into the Mazda's. Like I mentioned earlier, we bought my wife a Mazda6 last year with the 6cyl and that little sum'b!^@h will plum get up and haul! The on-ramp we use to get on the interstate near our house has an uphill slope. In my Dodge 1500 (4.7L) I'm lucky if I can hit 75 with the pedal to the floor, the a/c off and a good tail wind. But with my wife's car, I hit 90mph. The only reason it didn't go faster was because I backed off the pedal but still had plenty of room left in the pedal....wait...you're a cop....disregard....I meant 60mph :blink: It's a quick little sporty car, handles great on the road and is good on gas. The back seat has plenty of leg room as well. I bought a OEM style spoiler off of eBay that came painted for $108 and we had her windows tinted.
We found hers at Carmax here locally. It's an 06 (we bought it in 07) that had just over 11K miles on it. The bonus being it was under $18K and came fully loaded: power seats/windows/mirrors/6-speaker stereo w/cd, etc. It also has a feature where we can go from it being a 6 speed automatic transmission to a 6 speed manual.
Might be an option if your wife is wanting a sporty car but is good on gas