kid,
I've actually been looking at Isuzu Amigo's and Rodeo Sports lately. I would love to get one of these to stay in the "family" and still be able to retire the VX from daily driver status to garage queen. The Amigo's and Rodeo Sports are actually, from what I can tell, the same car but they changed the name sometime around 2000/2001. The VX is pretty much a Sport with different sheet metal so you already know how to work on the running gear and to watch out for oil consumption in the engine.
I've seen Rodeo Sport 4x4's for as low as $4k, but they usually have 80k to 100k+ miles on them. I figure I'm just going to put a bunch of miles on it anyway so why not buy a used one. If you're looking for a gas sipper, I would go with something else as I can only guess that these things get the same kind of milage that we do.
Just a thought.
"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong, it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair."
-Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless