I would agree with the other posts here.
Buy the later model. There's all the improvements that were made, but if both were equally maintained, they will be very comparible in terms of reliability. The newer one gives you four years. The 17k miles is nothing. Four years is significant.
Look at it this way, if the 97 had zero miles and the 01 had 17k miles which would you buy?
If both were the same color, the 97 since it has the extended emmissions warrenty and free tune up. But would drive both to compare.