20+ year old cars are much less safe than modern ones. I would strongly consider a newer car if I were you.

A 2006 car is pretty safe. It won't have gizmos like lane departure warnings or automatic braking but crash safety will be about as good as a new car, especially if you buy one that had good crash safety ratings at the time, such as Mercedes or Volvo.

Fords too. By 2006, they'd pulled all the Volvo intellectual property they could out of the acquisition and ported it to their flagship vehicles.

The T4 is better than the T3 where you are the crumple zone.