$500 Cars

A $500 Civic won't last 4 months.
I'm not trying to dissuade you from buying a beater, but your budget is too low.

;^)

I bought a 1993 Toyota Corolla for $500 that lasted a whole year before a rod in the engine blew. I have a 1995 Geo Metro that I bought for $300 laying around. I'm slowly in the process of replacing the head gasket. But I think this car may fart out soon as well.

0.1666666666 3k civics

>Economic strategy is to go through a $500 beater ever several months or so
This is a terrible economic strategy that will end up costing you more money than just saving up a few grand and buying a better beater car.
I recommend Oldsmobiles. It's a dead badge that was popular with old people, so you can pick one up in decent condition for cheap because everybody else is looking for a Civic or a Camry.

This guy is smart. Aleros and Intrigues are good and cheap. Old Buicks are similar.

Your other option is the early 2000s Hyundai Accents, Kia Spectras, etc. Awful but will run.

Thank you for the advice! Do I need to know anything specific about maintaining these kind of cars?

Most of them are built on similar platforms, like the W-Body, so parts are pretty cheap but getting to them can be a headache (in my old 99 lumina I had to disassemble the washer bottle to get to the battery, for example).
Other than that, stuff like oil changes are really easy. On most 90s-00s GM cars, the transmission was the weak link, but the 3.1 and the 3.8 v6s were taxi engines and held up well as long as you kept the fluids topped off.

Also Ford Taurus, Dodge Intrepid.
Basically any sedan that would have been used as a rental car or government fleet vehicle.
Supply is high, demand is lower and maintenance is cheaper.

Another option, Chevy Cavalier.
It was a miserable little car that was constantly out shadowed by the Ford Escort, but that's a good thing.
All the escorts are gone, they have been driven into dust, but you can still get a working Cavalier for $1000-$1500.
Also don't rule out Saturn, it's another dead badge that people largely forgot about.

Gotta 95 blazer off a crack head trailer trash bitch for $700 she wanted a grand but I talked her down because she clearly needed a fix. Not a Tahoe but, hell it'll last. Semi fuel efficient and spacious. Really comfy to ride too.

This is you best option. You won't have a dash but that engine will run to the end of time.

This is a terrible economic strategy and is a large part of why you will remain poor for the foreseeable future.

The only way this works is if you can do your own maintenance, are okay with crawling through junkyards, and know exactly what to look for in a shitbox.

Otherwise, you're probably better off using that $500 as a down payment on a $3k Civic.

I could feasibly get by making payments. So for the purpose of mechanical longevity and price, should I consider a $3000 civic? What would be a good year/mile quotia for that price? How about the corolla?

This of course heavily depends on your financial situation. There are plenty of people who think you should never ever take out a loan on a car and I don't entirely disagree with them.

But, if you think you can EASILY make the payments and you aren't super mechanically inclined, it might be a better option. $500 cars are a minefield to shop for, 99% of them will be complete and utter trash and will cost you a lot more than the initial $500 to keep running over the course of several months.

In the $3000 range there's still a lot of shitty cars but good deals are a lot easier to find than they are at $500. "3k civic" is a Veeky Forums meme, in this price range I'd look at early 2000s Corollas, Camrys, panther/Crown Vics, etc. In all honesty a lot of the Civics in this price range will be shit since the automatic transmissions made before 2006 were unreliable as hell (but the manuals were great). Look at the sticky thread on cars under $5000 to get a better idea.

What is your local craigslist?

don't fall for the $500 shitbox meme. or do. I don't give a fuck.

There's a lot of pitfalls to financing a beater.
The biggest one is that reputable lenders won't sign off on a loan that small because it's not worth it for them to repo a piece of shit car in case you default. Most good dealers or banks won't finance less than $7-$10k.
That leaves you with shady lenders or buy here/pay here places and they are notorious scam artists. They will drown you in fees and interest in the hopes you will default and they take the car back and sell it to the next sucker. Or worse, they say you were approved, give you the car, then show up a few days later and say your loan fell through, take car back and keep your down payment as a "penalty".
Also if you finance a car your insurance costs will be higher.
Also also, don't take out a loan if you "feasibly" can make the payments. Only take a loan if you can absolutely make the payments.
I've been in your predicament before, and am a lifelong beater enthusiast, and by far the best option is to save up some money and buy an OK beater rather than borrowing money you don't have or rolling the dice on a $500 heap.

500 dollars will get you scrap "mechanic special" bullshit. there is nobody on this planet selling a good-to-go car for 500 dollars if it's not your mom, dad or grandparent. just save more money. 2000 dollars is the price point where you're gonna find decent running shitboxes. anything the owner wants 500 for is gonna require a shitload of repairs and have shit wrong with it, and the last thing you wanna do is put money into a 20 year old rusted out hunk of shit

These dudes are right OP, unless you need a car right away, save some more. 1k is the minimum, plus you need cash for insurance, registration, inspection if that applies, repairs if they happen. Unless you get a deal from friends or family, $500 is gonna suck.

>save up $2000
>find grandma's old Buick for sale for $2k cause she did
>Talk grandma's kids down to $1500
>Drive your hooptie Le Sabre to McDonalds and buy 250 McChickens with the money you saved.

Excellent financial advice

There's a lot of good advice in this thread and I hope you can use it to find some wheels, OP.
You learn so much more from a beater than you do a new car. Not just mechanically either, beaters are a life lesson.
In my weird Utopian world, everyone would be required to own a car worth less than $5k for one year as a stipulation of getting your driver's license.

>tfw would make a bad decision on this if I only had the space
goldcountry.craigslist.org/cto/d/1982-toyota-supra/6442866053.html

if it's at all workable from your inspection when you get there a car for 500 bucks can, at the worst, be parted out or sold for scrap with very minimal loss as long as you do your work yourself (and enjoy that kind of thing)

Queen

Not entirely true! I bought a $500 blazer that just needed a new pumpkin (40 bucks from the junkyard). Thing's been running like a clock every day for the last 6 months.

>$500 car

what the hell? Get something not shit.

My first car was a 1987 Toyota Celica GT-S... it was listed on Craigslist for $600. I went and looked at it, talked him down to $500 and bought it.

A few months later the clutch gave out and it cost me about $600 to get that fixed which sucked, it also had terrible suspension and when I braked hard enough I could hear the tires touching the inside of the wheel wells.

It ended up lasting me a year until I got a new car and it was kind of a fun car to have, however the lesson here is you need to expect to spend more money on it... also my insurance was ridiculous because it was a sports car... $160 a month for minimum coverage....

>needed a new pumpkin
Is this some vernacular I'm not familiar with or am I still this clueless after decades of being into cars.

I still think that Luminas are one of the best beaters you can get. It's one of the most horrendously boring cars from the 90 but that engine will go F O R E V E R as long as you keep the oil changes up.
If you can find a base model Lumina in driveable shape for $2k or less, fucking jump on it.

rear tcase was leaking, ended up getting a g80 eaton.

The moral of the story is that if you want to go the $500 beater with a heater route, you have to know how to do your own work and not be afraid to try new shit. I had a 99' dodge ram 1500 that I bought before the blazer for 700 bucks, ran for well over a year before I blew the plenum gasket. I fixed it, replaced all brake lines, filled the rust, drum to disc conversion in the rear, ended up selling it for a 900 buck proffit.

How is this a warning? Those old Celicas were fun as hell, and they're basically gone now. You got a year of good driving in a neat car for the equivalent of $90/mth. Good job, friendo.

Oh I don't regret buying it at all, It's just that I could barely afford to get the clutch replaced at the time. It was a really fun first car, I actually ended up selling it for $1000.

Sold it after I bought this 240SX.

>Abandoned rusty car
>Freshly cut grass under it

Best bet is a mid/early 2000s dodge or chrysler minivan. There are shit tons of them out there, they may be rusty even ...

Figure out what you can live with... these minivans are not bad, are easy to fix and can be had for cheap as f

Intrgue is a terrible automobile and they're shot to fix/work on... getting an older bester from old people is a good idea

My dude, that's fantastic.

This Celica dude above is a great example of how you can do ok if you know your market and are good at haggling.

Go to a dealership and ask the mechanics if they're trying to get rid of anything. They'll have the interesting shit and will know exactly what it needs, what they've done, and shoot you straight about it. A lot of techs have cars they wrench on for fun, go to them not craigslist.

"Pumpkin" is generally a stand in for referring to an axle differential

Thanks man! Kind of wish I could track it down and buy it back... if it's still up and running. I recently found the e-mail from the guy I sold it to which had his cell number, I texted the number but the person who responded was someone else. :(

As an addendum this line of thought got me a 1981 Toyota Corona running for 300

In my area there a lot of functional 90s Corollas for around the $500 range. I went through one and it lasted me a year. Thoughts on this general make and model?

A lot of really good advice guys! Thank you!

If you send me a $500 offer for a functional car I'm selling, I'll agree just so I can knee cap you for being an annoying cunt.

Buy a wagon and rig a motor and steering to it

MODS

I bought pic related for $500 this past summer.
It was drivable. Just cosmetic issues among small mechanical stuff.
Original engine. 365k miles.

>pic related it's mine
>girl-sits-in-an-abandoned-rusty-car.jpg
Sure

>reading newspaper
>$1100 Audi (I think it was a 2010 sedan)
>says it was just too small for the family
I should have just bought it.

you're betting off getting a $500 bike, like a low km 1980's honda

i have one and it's lasted for years