Any of the silver uniden radios will be a good radio
the little black ones are throw away radios.
as said forget cobra uniden built cobra at one time and they was good radios
but they are no longer made by uniden.a lot of offbrand stuff have poor filters inside and will be very noisy
wile your car is running.in most casres uniden have good noise filters and inline ones can be bought if you need more.
most of all get a good set up not cheap junk,
a good 68/78 uniden series will work good and then will not work for crap
if you skimp on an antenna system.a radio is only as good as theantenna it works with.
i have a kenwood hf radio and yes these will talk long range and world wide as said before
but you must have a good antenna system but this is way overkill for your needs.
a personal radio set may work also.
For a mobile unit I would get nothing less than a uniden 68 series radio.
run the power cord to the battery,yes you will have to add wire you can buy the double strand red and black
at radio shack etc you need a good heavy 10ga. or so wire.
ground the mount bracket to a good ground with 10 ga wire also.
get a wilson little wil mag mount antenna these are great and stick down hard
and make sure you have a low standing wave and your set