The worst vehicle I ever had from a reliability and cost of unscheduled maintenance was my old '03 Chevy Trailblazer. It cost me between $200 and $1200 a year in repairs of faulty parts in the 8 years I had it. I'm not talking about maintenance items like brakes and tires. That one almost got me to stop buying GMs.
When I looked at replacements I was looking at Ford F150s. The ones out there at the time were either too old or too new and out of my budget. I ended up with the Sierra below and couldn't be happier. I bought it with 85k miles, it has 120k on it now. It's been pretty much bullet proof.
As said above, one in every bunch. Don't give up.