so true. My first three vehicles combined cost less than $1k including repairs I did. And that got me through 4-5 years.
Discussion
My first car was 300 dollars (75 Grand Prix), second was well, expensive (87 TA when came into some money, was young and dumb), third was 450 (77 Mustang II) , fourth was a 2500 dollar truck (79 Chevy with a strait 6 Nova Motor in it).
First "New Car" was a Nissan Pick up, 14K brand new with an extended cab and basically fully loaded. That was a 1994 model. You could get a base model standard cab at the time for about 9K.
That Nissan was 0 down, traded in the beat to shit Chevy I had on it, payment was under 300 and I had no fucking credit worth shit at the time.
My first car was an '83 Dodge Aries cost $25, then $125 to put a clutch in with my dad. next I had an 81 Chevy citation I think $175 at the time. then I got two 1979 mustang but it had a body one had an engine. I smashed it to make one decent car
Flashback! My crew and I called cars like that, Aires, Colts, Chevetes, Monzas, Citations, etc. "Disposable Cars" in the mid - late 80s. We could go down to Redding and find something like that easily for 100-250 buck, drive it for about a year then sell or junk it for almost what we paid for it.
In my tiny brain back then I thought it would always be that way.