Good example since my wife and I have a 99 Taurus. By the way it's our favorite car ever. Bad milage though. We picked the Taurus because of some of the very things you mention. There are a zillion of them on the road which gave us lot of choices. We ended up with a salvation title with the works for only 4000 bucks. It was a risk and so far it has been a really good gamble.
It's interesting to ponder resale value on camry vs Taurus vs Harley. There is a big value factor though. Harley stays valuable because of a lot of factors that are hard to translate to cars.
I wonder if the mileage is bad because of the salvage title? They're not exceptionally frugal cars, but I get about 23/30 on mine with the base 3.0L 12V.