Neon's are actually good little cars. When the wife was preggo with our first kidlet, those were just coming out. We live in SoCal and we didn't have a car with A/C. She threatened my life and said her pregnant body and our soon to be born son needed A/C or they would die. And at the very least, I would die if they didn't get it. I was working at a Ford dealer at the time.......................imagine how cool I looked showing up at the company picnic in a brand new Dodge. D'oh!!!!
But know this...............................
#1) Make DARN SURE that the timing belt is fairly new. If you don't know that it was done in the last 30k FOR SURE, put a new timing belt on it. And replace the water pump at the same time. The timing belt drives the water pump. If the pump fails, the belt fails. Failed belt=16 bent valves.
#2) If you want to fix the oil leak, it's the head gasket. That's a good time to do the timing belt and the water pump.
But seriously, those little things move pretty good!
And the DOHC motor kicks ass. We loved ours. I kinda miss it.
Ours used to get over 30mpg sometimes. It was a bad ass little car.