I would suggest you purchase a subscription to the online version of
Consumer Reports magazine. www.consumerreports.org  (approx $29.95 /yr).
You will be able to look up the reliability history of most vehicles by year
from 1998 - 2005.  It will also give you deminsions and specs and road test
results.  You are able to make comparisons of up to 4 vehicles at a time.
It will also specify whether or not it recommends a vehicle.

The 2nd suggestion for more general stats (and you can compare model years
and different vehicles as well) is on the J.D. Powers & Associates
website.--- it's www.jdpower.com

When it comes to storage capacity, at least for the CRV, I've been able to
get 15 3cubic foot bags of mulch in the back of mine with the rear seats
folded down.  And as for mileage, I've maintained a consistent 25mpg or
better in the year and a half I've had mine.

On 4/6/06 7:29 PM, in article i5cb329g0tgsarhv9hge461h89uncaporu@4ax.com,

I have had reasonable success researching the specs of various model years
of cars on edmunds.com.

Its buried pretty deep.  Click on the "used cars" tab; on the page that
comes up; ignore the zip code request and click on "research prices and
specs"; on that page, work your way down to the model and year you want and
click on the vehicle model itself (not the research link).  When you finally
get to the page for a specific year/model, "specifications" is in the "car
features" box on the left side of the page.