Due to the age of the car RUST is a big enemy, usual places rear arches sills, drivers floor area.
How it's been looked after will determine to a extent reliability.
As for 2wd or 4wd try and have a drive in each, they drive very differently, don't know about magenta mercury grey is the bets in 2wd!!(guess what I've got).
Tyres are again what people prefer, I am currently using Hankook Ventus Evo V12 K110, don't let the name fool you, awsome tyres, I use quite a few a year so have chance to try new ones that come along.
If wanting to keep it std don't bother with wasted spark, if the oe system is in good order it will be fine, it would benefit from a better set of plugs and a group a coil.
You can still have it appear std but be at stage 1 power around 270bhp, this brings a lot more torque and makes a much nicer drive.
Looked after they can be 100% reliable, just redoing my engine at the moment(waiting on flywheel slotting) after it covered 200,973 miles.
If you want to do anything else there above a std spec car there's some pretty universal mods that work well, air filter exhaust for a start.
You may have trouble finding a std one, I know of one near Attleborough, Norfolk which has 3000 miles from new a mercury grey 2wd sapph, but this is rare to find even high mileage std ones are rare.
If you can take along someone who knows cossies, 2wd and wet can be a handful, even worse when more power is added.
Std handling is fairly shit due in no small part to the crappy rear beam or rather it's mounting a poly one here(about £100) makes no end of difference.
tabetha