Sub-$100 purchase price; it took more than that to be drivable, though. Sure, it was “running”, but 2-1/2 cylinders out of 4 isn’t running good.
A better car was the one I bought for $350 because it was clipped in the front corner, bending the spindle and tweaking the whole radiator panel over. I replaced the suspension for $75, slotted the holes in the fender so things at least looked good, and I was good to go … for two months. The A/C went out, so I sold it for $850.
@brhfl It never had a tune up in 180k miles, so of course the plugs were seized. And the wires were burnt. And the unburnt fuel meant the catalytic converter was fucked up, restricting flow. Along with other maladies.
@narfcake Lovely. I bought a 1996 Ford Ranger, with almost 190K on the clock, from a relative for $1. The plug wires had Motorcraft & 1995 written on them - so I can only assume they were original.
It’s neat to see that happen, but how the hello can a tune up slip through the cracks for 14 years?!?
I paid $85 for a car that had been about to cost $100, until some fool backed into it from ACROSS the STREET, and dented the back passenger door. He gave the seller $15 to take care of the dent, and I got the car with fifteen bucks off. My, my, but it was a LONG time ago.
My first car, which I purchased in 1976, was a 1963 Chevrolet Impala sedan. I paid the princely sum of $50.00. It got me through High School and a year or two after that. If I remember right, it had a 327 CID “Turbo-Fire” engine (can’t remember if it was a 6 or 8 cylinder though). Got a hefty 8 miles to the gallon!
1966 Buick LeSabre, 310 Wildcat V8, baby blue, that I traded a .32 calibre revolver plus $30 cash for to my best friend’s granddad. That car was a very reliable ride, and it got me back and forth to college and my clinical studies until I was “T-boned” one night in a terrible downpour, by a drunk driving without his headlights on. I ended up with a concussion and internal injuries, and spent two weeks in hospital. He was unhurt. I was charged with causing the accident, because I was uninsured, plus he had political pull in the small town where I lived. A relative went and paid him a visit, found him very drunk, and paid him a small amount to get the charges against me dropped.
A Presbyterian minister I knew, sold me his 1964 VW Beetle for $50 when he bought a new car. Drove it for a long time.
Free. Wrote a check for $100 to purchase a 1990’s Chevy Beretta. I purchased the car for a figure 8 race we were going to have at my friends bachelor party. That didn’t happen, so I sold it a few weeks later for $100. This didn’t make it free however, the person I purchased it from never cashed my check. So I cleared a hundred bucks on that deal. More recently I reclaimed a 2004 Pontiac Bonneville for $400 that I had sold 2 years earlier. The guy never changed over the title, then the car got towed. A letter sent for me to come pick up my car. So I did. Paid the towing company $400 to get my car back, got a replacement title, now my son will drive it for his first car.
@jbartus My initial thought was the guy forfeited the car by leaving it in the towing yard long enough for a letter to arrive… but another, scarier possibility occurred to me: what if he was just unable to retrieve it because the title didn’t match, or couldn’t afford the impound fee? The consequences of losing a car can be devastating.
@jbartus Yeah, that crossed my mind for sure. We checked into the whole deal and it was towed because it had been abandoned in a parking lot for almost 6 months. 1 tire was flat and off the rim and the plates were missing. So he certainly didn’t seem to care much. And I didn’t want abandoned property floating around with my name attached to it. We also checked with the police, they didn’t have any outstanding issues. The whole thing was kind of weird to me, but we did what we could.
@trisk When we picked it up, there was no validation of ownership required. The towing company didn’t care who took whatever from their lot. Just pay the money and take what you want was the way things felt. Anyway, the guy said that this type of thing actually happens quite a bit. It was all new to me though.
In 1986, I paid $125 for a 1960 Chevy Biscayne. It was a rust-bucket, complete with a (I’m quite sure, legally obtained) yield sign on the driver’s-side floor to cover the gaping rust holes. It had an AM radio with vacuum tubes, a 3-on-the-tree and would go 0-60 in 5 miles.
If you read that, you might think I didn’t like the car, which is absolutely not the case. It also sat 8 comfortably, and the horizontal fins made it the perfect car for a high schooler like I was, as all my friends could sit on the back of the car to talk.
$300 for my first car, a 1971 Dodge Challenger. It had a transmission problem, would not upshift from first gear. I had a rebuilt transmission installed for about another $300 (so I guess technically the car cost $600 before I could drive it). Drove it out of high school and through college until a freeze plug between engine and trans rusted out. Couldn’t fix it so bought a second car.
Right at when it was discovered that the chevy corvair was a piece of worthless junk (the air cooled engine interfered with the oil delivery and eventually would blow the seals which cost more than the new car itself cost to replace) I found a guy who sold me one for $75.00… Two for fifty bucks a piece… They both ran for several months then the inevitable occurred so I just trashed the one for parts and drove the second one for a few more months. I couldn’t sell it for what I paid for it because the rumor had spread nor would anyone take it in as a trade-in for a real car so I drove it until it no longer worked then turned it into a sturdy dog house… A few weeks after that someone paid me $75.00 for the makeshift dog house and the junker part I had in the back forty so in reality I bought two corvairs for twenty-five bucks and got to drive them around for a while.
First car was a gift from my grandparents, but I don’t count that. Paid $50 for a 1980 Honda CX500, but that’s a motorcycle. So the cheapest car is the $600 I spent on a 1991 Mazda Miata with 180k on the clock. But really what I spent was $600 in stereo and alarm to install in my friend’s other car and received the Miata in trade. That stereo sounded fantastic.
The miata is half torn apart now with a GT40 crate 302 bored .30 over and a world class T-5 in it, waiting on wiring, exhaust, and most of the drivetrain to be fabricated. It will have an Aerostar drive shaft, 929 rear axles, and RX-7 brakes when it’s all said and done, so it will be quite the Frankencar. That project has been on hold for a few years but is on its way to being resumed soon.
I had a snazzy Trans Am (black, red velvet interior, no bird on the hood cuz that would be tacky) in the 70s, but was going to school in Binghamton, where it snows six months a year. So I bought a “beater” - some 20-year-old, uninspected, unregistered Plymouth Valiant. It barely ran…maybe pushed out 40 horsepower. I knew I would have no problems with cops because the roads near me were so bad that cops were worried about survival, not inspection stickers. I drove it all winter, garaging the Trans Am, then drove it the next winter also. It actually survived, though I think I used as much oil as gas.
In my final spring, I parked it in the parking lot of the Oakdale Mall and walked away, keys in the ignition.
1999 Toyota Camry. Free family discard. Sold it for $100 after the engine blew up at 240k miles. Gosh darn heck of a car. Same color as the stock image below.
I paid $562.50 for a 1990 Geo Prism off Ebay in 2002. . . It ran for 2.5 years with great gas mileage after replacing the alternator. . . .I get a little misty-eyed thinking about it.
@asharp they were. I think it was the same body as a Toyota Corolla. That was back when you could work on a car yourself instead of plugging it into a computer.
1962 Dodge Polara 500 convertable. I paid $200 for it when I got out of the army in 1968. Rusty red, cheap reupholster, but it ran. 3 months later, once I had a job, I sold it for the same $200 and bought a new VW bug.
40 bucks for an old (I don’t remember what year) Toyota Camry. It ran ok, but brakes had absolutely no pads and the rotors were destroyed. Drums and bolts in the back were so rusted I didn’t even want to start with them, so I bought racing brakes for the front and left the back be (dangerous, I know, but I was 19 and it seemed like a good idea at the time). Picked up parts to replace them, got home, found out there was a large hole rusted in the trunk and the carpet covering it was not stiff enough to hold in the rotors and jackstands. Walked back down the hill since I didn’t trust the car’s ability to stop going down it, picked up the parts, installed the brakes, painted it black with a red racing stripe using rustoleum. Drove it for 8 months, then left it in long term parking in the SeaTac airport with the signed title and keys in the front seat and posted on craigslist when I moved back east. Person who picked it up sent me an email thanking me.
@Pantheist Now that is a seriously clever way to get to the airport free, not pay for parking and ditch your car. Of course these days if the title had your correct address on it the next stop could have been your house to fill the trunk and back seat.
@Kidsandliz Thanks
As far as getting robbed… shrug I didn’t live at that address anymore, and I don’t see why you’d drive an hour and a half to the house I used to live at if you were going to rob a random person.
@Pantheist Because they’d assume you still lived there when they picked up the car out of long term parking? And they wanted to get on America’s dumbest criminals list?
Bought a 1957 Chevy 210 2 door sedan, turquoise with a white roof for $75 in 1974. It actually ran and drove. Back then those were just really old used cars!
I bought a 1981 Dodge Aspen for $40 and some Chinese-made car speakers in 1999. It ran great, I just had to change the tie rods. I used the car to film a skit with some friends a week later. (I would put it in drive, slam it into park and jump out the window in the skit. We did that 15 times). On the way home from filming, the rod started to knock. I was 15 miles away from home, so I kept driving it. It had the slant-six engine (they are basically bullet-proof). My dad was pissed.
My first car was a 1969 Volkswagen Beetle that I bought in 1990 for $350.00 at the Pevely Flea Market. It was painted (brush marks) with black latex house paint, the heating carrels were rusted out, and in 6 weeks I had to replace the engine.
I’ve owned three cars, but didn’t pay for two of them (one was a hand-me-down from my stepsister, the other was inherited from my grandfather). So the least I’ve paid is the $1000 I paid for my partially-restored '83 Ranger. Best purchase I’ve ever made - it just hit a third of a million miles, and it still going like a champ. I’ve put an average of about $800 a year into it since (mostly wear-and-tear repairs), so I guess it’s up to about 5 grand now, but it’s still cheaper than making payments - and my mechanic says the engine has a lot of life left in it. Now that I’m making decent money, I plan on finishing the restoration over the next year or so.
(I also bought an old motorcycle for $400 once, but never rode it, and wound up giving it to a friend.)
Given a older 2WD-4WD toyota tercel wagon by a relative because it didn’t pass inspection due to body rust. Had I been in an accident likely all that would have been left of it is a bit of rust dust on the road. Great car. Never needed a repair, just routine maintenance. Several years later was moving to a state where I’d have to sink some serious money into it to fix the A/C, debated what to do for ages, and finally decided to sell it. I got what I had in it including the cost of picking it up, insurance, all maintenance… Talk about a cool free car. Almost as good as using a parental family unit car - no cost but gas. LOL. My 1990 ghetto van (grand caravan) blew an engine bearing last year or I’d still be driving it and frequenting junk yards for parts. Now I have an almost 12 year old honda that right off the bat needed nearly $600 sunk into it, but other than routine maintenance nothing since then. That took 6 weeks to find though as in my price range they were not checking out.
My dad bought used, at the time, a 13 year old 1940 Packard from the proverbial little old lady who only drove it on Sundays. Family still has it. (Photo is not of his - his has some of the paint almost worn off due to waxing it so much over the years and needs a fair bit of work).
And when family members would get married we’d take photos of them looking out the rear window with just married hanging on the trunk handle. We still even have the back seat blanket that goes with it (again not our car).
@f00l I had an 84 that was fairly new. It was an ok car. the real disappointment was it only got 23 miles a gallon from the 4 sicklinder and really couldn’t get out of it’s own way. Ford sold it as an economy car and I guess if you other car was an F350 it was. But compared to rice burners it guzzled gas.
Cheapest was my Grandpa’s 87 Olds Ninety-Eight, after he died. In reality it was a Free gift. but dad wanted me to have to pay something for it, so we told the Title Dept I paid $1k, so i had to pay the tax &title on that.
that was oct/nov 98.
By the time i sold it in Aug 2001, the engine had been replaced with a jasper reman unit, the trans had been rebuilt, and it had been in a front end collision w/ frame damage(not my fault, i wasn’t even in the car at the time), and repaired. between the money my dad laid out for the driveline, and the repair to the damage that goodyear did(and paid to repair, but that’s another story)about $10k had been put into the car, and everything north of the firewall was less than 2 years/20k mi old.
Sold it for $2k.
least expensive after that was the 2005 Neon i bought off my brother in Feb 2010. he bought it new in Jan’06, put 54k mi on it, replaced it w/ a Mustang. he was gonna put it up for $5k, sold it to me for $4k.I put another 30k mi on it before I sold it to my buddies mom(for his Little Brother) in early '14 for $2700
Sub-$100 purchase price; it took more than that to be drivable, though. Sure, it was “running”, but 2-1/2 cylinders out of 4 isn’t running good.
A better car was the one I bought for $350 because it was clipped in the front corner, bending the spindle and tweaking the whole radiator panel over. I replaced the suspension for $75, slotted the holes in the fender so things at least looked good, and I was good to go … for two months. The A/C went out, so I sold it for $850.
@narfcake It’s the 1/2 that really seals it!
@brhfl It never had a tune up in 180k miles, so of course the plugs were seized. And the wires were burnt. And the unburnt fuel meant the catalytic converter was fucked up, restricting flow. Along with other maladies.
@narfcake Lovely. I bought a 1996 Ford Ranger, with almost 190K on the clock, from a relative for $1. The plug wires had Motorcraft & 1995 written on them - so I can only assume they were original.
It’s neat to see that happen, but how the hello can a tune up slip through the cracks for 14 years?!?
@narfcake Clearly you did not live in CA when you owned that one.
I paid $85 for a car that had been about to cost $100, until some fool backed into it from ACROSS the STREET, and dented the back passenger door. He gave the seller $15 to take care of the dent, and I got the car with fifteen bucks off. My, my, but it was a LONG time ago.
My first car, which I purchased in 1976, was a 1963 Chevrolet Impala sedan. I paid the princely sum of $50.00. It got me through High School and a year or two after that. If I remember right, it had a 327 CID “Turbo-Fire” engine (can’t remember if it was a 6 or 8 cylinder though). Got a hefty 8 miles to the gallon!
1966 Buick LeSabre, 310 Wildcat V8, baby blue, that I traded a .32 calibre revolver plus $30 cash for to my best friend’s granddad. That car was a very reliable ride, and it got me back and forth to college and my clinical studies until I was “T-boned” one night in a terrible downpour, by a drunk driving without his headlights on. I ended up with a concussion and internal injuries, and spent two weeks in hospital. He was unhurt. I was charged with causing the accident, because I was uninsured, plus he had political pull in the small town where I lived. A relative went and paid him a visit, found him very drunk, and paid him a small amount to get the charges against me dropped.
A Presbyterian minister I knew, sold me his 1964 VW Beetle for $50 when he bought a new car. Drove it for a long time.
$1 for a clean 1978 Cutlass from my brother. I love my brother.
Better question, what’s the MOST you ever spent on a car.
@Stallion I inherited my dad’s car when he died of brain cancer.
'73 Plymouth Fury, $300 in 1991 dollars
Think I just told the Ft Leonard Wood, demolition derby story a month ago here.
Free. Wrote a check for $100 to purchase a 1990’s Chevy Beretta. I purchased the car for a figure 8 race we were going to have at my friends bachelor party. That didn’t happen, so I sold it a few weeks later for $100. This didn’t make it free however, the person I purchased it from never cashed my check. So I cleared a hundred bucks on that deal. More recently I reclaimed a 2004 Pontiac Bonneville for $400 that I had sold 2 years earlier. The guy never changed over the title, then the car got towed. A letter sent for me to come pick up my car. So I did. Paid the towing company $400 to get my car back, got a replacement title, now my son will drive it for his first car.
@heyitsme while technically legal I’m not sure I’d be comfortable with reclaiming the car from a moral/ethical standpoint.
@jbartus My initial thought was the guy forfeited the car by leaving it in the towing yard long enough for a letter to arrive… but another, scarier possibility occurred to me: what if he was just unable to retrieve it because the title didn’t match, or couldn’t afford the impound fee? The consequences of losing a car can be devastating.
@jbartus Yeah, that crossed my mind for sure. We checked into the whole deal and it was towed because it had been abandoned in a parking lot for almost 6 months. 1 tire was flat and off the rim and the plates were missing. So he certainly didn’t seem to care much. And I didn’t want abandoned property floating around with my name attached to it. We also checked with the police, they didn’t have any outstanding issues. The whole thing was kind of weird to me, but we did what we could.
@trisk When we picked it up, there was no validation of ownership required. The towing company didn’t care who took whatever from their lot. Just pay the money and take what you want was the way things felt. Anyway, the guy said that this type of thing actually happens quite a bit. It was all new to me though.
@heyitsme that’s very weird. I wonder what happened.
@heyitsme
2004 bonneville?! Was it blue? That was mine! Just forgot where I parked it. Someone stole my plates?
Can I pick it up Friday?
@MehnofLaMehncha Well no, its not blue. Close though!
In 1986, I paid $125 for a 1960 Chevy Biscayne. It was a rust-bucket, complete with a (I’m quite sure, legally obtained) yield sign on the driver’s-side floor to cover the gaping rust holes. It had an AM radio with vacuum tubes, a 3-on-the-tree and would go 0-60 in 5 miles.
If you read that, you might think I didn’t like the car, which is absolutely not the case. It also sat 8 comfortably, and the horizontal fins made it the perfect car for a high schooler like I was, as all my friends could sit on the back of the car to talk.
Looked like this, but with much more faded paint and lots more rust:
$300 for my first car, a 1971 Dodge Challenger. It had a transmission problem, would not upshift from first gear. I had a rebuilt transmission installed for about another $300 (so I guess technically the car cost $600 before I could drive it). Drove it out of high school and through college until a freeze plug between engine and trans rusted out. Couldn’t fix it so bought a second car.
I still have the Challenger…
Right at when it was discovered that the chevy corvair was a piece of worthless junk (the air cooled engine interfered with the oil delivery and eventually would blow the seals which cost more than the new car itself cost to replace) I found a guy who sold me one for $75.00… Two for fifty bucks a piece… They both ran for several months then the inevitable occurred so I just trashed the one for parts and drove the second one for a few more months. I couldn’t sell it for what I paid for it because the rumor had spread nor would anyone take it in as a trade-in for a real car so I drove it until it no longer worked then turned it into a sturdy dog house… A few weeks after that someone paid me $75.00 for the makeshift dog house and the junker part I had in the back forty so in reality I bought two corvairs for twenty-five bucks and got to drive them around for a while.
First car was a gift from my grandparents, but I don’t count that. Paid $50 for a 1980 Honda CX500, but that’s a motorcycle. So the cheapest car is the $600 I spent on a 1991 Mazda Miata with 180k on the clock. But really what I spent was $600 in stereo and alarm to install in my friend’s other car and received the Miata in trade. That stereo sounded fantastic.
The miata is half torn apart now with a GT40 crate 302 bored .30 over and a world class T-5 in it, waiting on wiring, exhaust, and most of the drivetrain to be fabricated. It will have an Aerostar drive shaft, 929 rear axles, and RX-7 brakes when it’s all said and done, so it will be quite the Frankencar. That project has been on hold for a few years but is on its way to being resumed soon.
I had a snazzy Trans Am (black, red velvet interior, no bird on the hood cuz that would be tacky) in the 70s, but was going to school in Binghamton, where it snows six months a year. So I bought a “beater” - some 20-year-old, uninspected, unregistered Plymouth Valiant. It barely ran…maybe pushed out 40 horsepower. I knew I would have no problems with cops because the roads near me were so bad that cops were worried about survival, not inspection stickers. I drove it all winter, garaging the Trans Am, then drove it the next winter also. It actually survived, though I think I used as much oil as gas.
In my final spring, I parked it in the parking lot of the Oakdale Mall and walked away, keys in the ignition.
$350 for an old Ford Topaz that was somehow in amazing pristine condition and ran like new.
Was a gift for my brother, who has always had troubles in life and needed reliable wheels for his job as pie flier.
He promptly sold it and bought some total POS that lasted maybe a year because, and I quote, “It was an automatic.”
/giphy bitter brotherly mistakes
$35 Borgward Isabella 1968
90hp 4 wheel independent coil spring suspension 4 on the tree.
Ruined me for Detroit iron.
@cranky1950
Have you still got this one? Lovely.
1999 Toyota Camry. Free family discard. Sold it for $100 after the engine blew up at 240k miles. Gosh darn heck of a car. Same color as the stock image below.
I paid $562.50 for a 1990 Geo Prism off Ebay in 2002. . . It ran for 2.5 years with great gas mileage after replacing the alternator. . . .I get a little misty-eyed thinking about it.
@jrwofuga Those cars were truly great. I had a '94 prism until the frame rusted out.
@asharp they were. I think it was the same body as a Toyota Corolla. That was back when you could work on a car yourself instead of plugging it into a computer.
1962 Dodge Polara 500 convertable. I paid $200 for it when I got out of the army in 1968. Rusty red, cheap reupholster, but it ran. 3 months later, once I had a job, I sold it for the same $200 and bought a new VW bug.
40 bucks for an old (I don’t remember what year) Toyota Camry. It ran ok, but brakes had absolutely no pads and the rotors were destroyed. Drums and bolts in the back were so rusted I didn’t even want to start with them, so I bought racing brakes for the front and left the back be (dangerous, I know, but I was 19 and it seemed like a good idea at the time). Picked up parts to replace them, got home, found out there was a large hole rusted in the trunk and the carpet covering it was not stiff enough to hold in the rotors and jackstands. Walked back down the hill since I didn’t trust the car’s ability to stop going down it, picked up the parts, installed the brakes, painted it black with a red racing stripe using rustoleum. Drove it for 8 months, then left it in long term parking in the SeaTac airport with the signed title and keys in the front seat and posted on craigslist when I moved back east. Person who picked it up sent me an email thanking me.
@Pantheist Now that is a seriously clever way to get to the airport free, not pay for parking and ditch your car. Of course these days if the title had your correct address on it the next stop could have been your house to fill the trunk and back seat.
@Kidsandliz Thanks
As far as getting robbed… shrug I didn’t live at that address anymore, and I don’t see why you’d drive an hour and a half to the house I used to live at if you were going to rob a random person.
@Pantheist Because they’d assume you still lived there when they picked up the car out of long term parking? And they wanted to get on America’s dumbest criminals list?
Bought a 1957 Chevy 210 2 door sedan, turquoise with a white roof for $75 in 1974. It actually ran and drove. Back then those were just really old used cars!
I bought a 1981 Dodge Aspen for $40 and some Chinese-made car speakers in 1999. It ran great, I just had to change the tie rods. I used the car to film a skit with some friends a week later. (I would put it in drive, slam it into park and jump out the window in the skit. We did that 15 times). On the way home from filming, the rod started to knock. I was 15 miles away from home, so I kept driving it. It had the slant-six engine (they are basically bullet-proof). My dad was pissed.
My first car was a 1969 Volkswagen Beetle that I bought in 1990 for $350.00 at the Pevely Flea Market. It was painted (brush marks) with black latex house paint, the heating carrels were rusted out, and in 6 weeks I had to replace the engine.
Loved that car.
I’ve owned three cars, but didn’t pay for two of them (one was a hand-me-down from my stepsister, the other was inherited from my grandfather). So the least I’ve paid is the $1000 I paid for my partially-restored '83 Ranger. Best purchase I’ve ever made - it just hit a third of a million miles, and it still going like a champ. I’ve put an average of about $800 a year into it since (mostly wear-and-tear repairs), so I guess it’s up to about 5 grand now, but it’s still cheaper than making payments - and my mechanic says the engine has a lot of life left in it. Now that I’m making decent money, I plan on finishing the restoration over the next year or so.
(I also bought an old motorcycle for $400 once, but never rode it, and wound up giving it to a friend.)
Given a older 2WD-4WD toyota tercel wagon by a relative because it didn’t pass inspection due to body rust. Had I been in an accident likely all that would have been left of it is a bit of rust dust on the road. Great car. Never needed a repair, just routine maintenance. Several years later was moving to a state where I’d have to sink some serious money into it to fix the A/C, debated what to do for ages, and finally decided to sell it. I got what I had in it including the cost of picking it up, insurance, all maintenance… Talk about a cool free car. Almost as good as using a parental family unit car - no cost but gas. LOL. My 1990 ghetto van (grand caravan) blew an engine bearing last year or I’d still be driving it and frequenting junk yards for parts. Now I have an almost 12 year old honda that right off the bat needed nearly $600 sunk into it, but other than routine maintenance nothing since then. That took 6 weeks to find though as in my price range they were not checking out.
My dad bought used, at the time, a 13 year old 1940 Packard from the proverbial little old lady who only drove it on Sundays. Family still has it. (Photo is not of his - his has some of the paint almost worn off due to waxing it so much over the years and needs a fair bit of work).
And when family members would get married we’d take photos of them looking out the rear window with just married hanging on the trunk handle. We still even have the back seat blanket that goes with it (again not our car).
A red 4-door Ford Tempo from the 90’s. Had less than 120k. Stick. $500.
I got another 150K out of it before it needed an engine. Might have been junk, I dunno, but it kept me in the road.
@f00l I had an 84 that was fairly new. It was an ok car. the real disappointment was it only got 23 miles a gallon from the 4 sicklinder and really couldn’t get out of it’s own way. Ford sold it as an economy car and I guess if you other car was an F350 it was. But compared to rice burners it guzzled gas.
Cheapest was my Grandpa’s 87 Olds Ninety-Eight, after he died. In reality it was a Free gift. but dad wanted me to have to pay something for it, so we told the Title Dept I paid $1k, so i had to pay the tax &title on that.
that was oct/nov 98.
By the time i sold it in Aug 2001, the engine had been replaced with a jasper reman unit, the trans had been rebuilt, and it had been in a front end collision w/ frame damage(not my fault, i wasn’t even in the car at the time), and repaired. between the money my dad laid out for the driveline, and the repair to the damage that goodyear did(and paid to repair, but that’s another story)about $10k had been put into the car, and everything north of the firewall was less than 2 years/20k mi old.
Sold it for $2k.
least expensive after that was the 2005 Neon i bought off my brother in Feb 2010. he bought it new in Jan’06, put 54k mi on it, replaced it w/ a Mustang. he was gonna put it up for $5k, sold it to me for $4k.I put another 30k mi on it before I sold it to my buddies mom(for his Little Brother) in early '14 for $2700