The first thing that came to my mind when I read Long route drives was Diesel. Unfortunately you don't plan to get one of those. We have a 2005 2.0D in the family, it's used for long drives only and has 400k+ but it still beats any local petrol car in pleasure of a long drive.
In petrol I'd recommend Wagon-R. it's a k-series engine and has excellent fuel efficiency on long routes, but the resale value is a huge downside. But it's still a hundred times better than cultus, apart from a decent shape, there's nothing good in cultus, but if you still plan to buy one, I'd suggest a pre 2003 model, use the rest of the money on restoring it and you'd have a far better ride than the new ones.