the straight 6 in a grand is fairly gutless. All of the extra amenities equals weight and more stuff to go wrong. I am biased towards mitsus to be honest but I have had many different 4x4s. Your goals could either be a small pick up or a SUV. Unibodies should be ruled out because of the cost to fix them if you tweak the sub frame. If you want a soft top option jeep wrangler has the most options but at your price point you'd need to buy an early TJ and build on it. Pretty able from the factory is the Montero, and it has factory lockers and lots of mods that are cheap and easy. Its popular as a soccer mom/ mall crawler and comes in quite a bit cheaper than many Toy and Jeep SUVs.