@Triedaq My Dad bought a 1949 5 window Chevrolet pick up in 1967 for $200. That was a fairly high price at the time but it was very close to as new condition. It was green with a tan interior. The wood in the bed still had most of it’s varnish! My Dad called it “our” truck. I drove it a lot. He sold it in 1971 when I no longer lived with my parents. I don’t know how much. I would love to have that little truck today!
In my days at the auto parts store I worked with a guy who also worked for one of the towing companies so he bought abandoned Ford’s/Vw’s with the odd GM product thrown in for an average of $200 Each. Just about all of them only needed some minor repair to be back on the road. His wife was very hard on vehicles and they lived in a bad neighborhood so there wasn’t much need to spend more than a couple hundred on their commuter vehicles. There was a Myers Manx and a early 70’s Lincoln sedan that were his babies
@sgtrock21–your dad god a real buy. Those 5 window pickup trucks are real collectors item today. This style came out in mid 1947 and continued through 1954. What is interesting is that the Chevrolet truck’s first redesign after WW II beat the car by 2 years. The first model year for the postwar Chevrolet car was 1949. The first restyled Ford truck was a 1948 model, but the first restyled car was a year behind with the 1949 model. Since trucks were made during WW II for the military, the stamping machines were probably worn out for the trucks where they weren’t for the cars, so it made sense to redesign the trucks first.
I am not sure how price compares but I bought a 71 nova in 78 I believe, it was a most beautiful lady in a college class of mine, I do believe the price was $350, had to get rid of it, well like an idiot I traded in the maroon nova with a white vinyl top in 1990 after driving it 22 years, yes I liked it well enough, but needed an econobox for a 90 mile daily commute, and for some reason, even though I had a sock stuck in by the distrubutor, actually a little forward, I was still going through a quart of oil per week. I wish I had not gotten rid of that car, or my 68 cougar xr7 black vinyl top over white, or my ranchero, dang my tears are foaming up my beer!
I had a 1970 Chevelle Malibu in 1990. I had paid 450 for it. It had a 307 and a Powerglide. The car was a Georgia car and it had either 80K or 180K on it. The body was cherry, the interior was crumbling. It was a somewhat unappealing brown color. I had it a couple years, but ended up selling it for $600 to a couple of guys that wanted to do a restoration. I liked the car a lot and wished I could have kept it, but just didn’t have the space or the money to put into it. (I had two other cars at the time) The little 200HP 307 was surprisingly torquey in that car, and was near bulletproof.
In 1981 I drove a 1967 ferrari 330 gtc which was for sale for $15k. I bought a 1980 vette instead. That would have been a better investment.
Ferraris seem to hold their value, but I imagine they are extremely expensive to maintain well
@Cavell, I’m guessing neither the Ferrari nor the Vette would be your least expensive car purchase. 
Mine was a blue VW Golf I bought for $500 in 1996. Used it for about two years and sold it for $700. It was a great student car. It was so old that It took about 3 weeks for the parts to arrive because they had to come from Germany. I used to go to auto scrap yards and find the same model. They allowed you to take the part you want. You would take the part out of the car, bring it to reception and they would tell you how much. Generally, most things were under $10. I also got a lot of mileage out of my AAA membership. They were great and didn’t mind coming to my rescue every other week.
1972 Datsun 510 coupe, automatic transmission… for $200 from a Ford dealer who wanted it off his lot. Complete with rust, 50,000 miles and metal-to-metal rear brakes. Later, a 1971 Datusn 510 sedan, for $350 with a manual trans and dents in EVERY panel, roof included. Complete with a see-thru trunk. Open the trunk and see thru to your shoes. Very cools cars, fun to drive but they never survive the salt in the mid-west.
In the early 70s while out in California, I bought a 4 Door Chrysler New Yorker with a 413 in it; one of those big tail fin jobs. Pretty straight, ran good, tagged, and even got me back to Oklahoma.
I gave a whopping 10 bucks for that car.
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Since trucks were made during WW II for the military, the stamping machines were probably worn out for the trucks where they weren’t for the cars, so it made sense to redesign the trucks first.”
@Triedaq – Bingo! That is partially correct.
Heard that same exact explanation as a very young child from my grandfather who was production manager at Bud Wheel in Detroit all through the Depression, WWII, and early post war years. Heard confirmation as an adult from my two uncles (his sons) who were both engineers that I remembered correctly that conversation overheard as a kid.
Also, throughout the war, trucks had undergone more mechanical upgrade redesign for military use than was apparent from outward appearances. So it wasn’t that complicated and time consuming to take truck redesigns forward for civilian appeal/sales. And the specs for producing new stamps already existed. Additionally, depending on the parts involved, there were both a multitude of spanking new unused parts already produced and some quite new stamping machines not yet worn out. The engineering had already been fairly complete; just had to apply it to civilian truck sensibilities. So new post war designs for trucks were easy to bring rapidly to market.
Cars, on the other hand, had no redesigns all through the war years and only a very, very few new cars had been produced for strictly for military use from the tail end of parts already in stock at the time when civilian car production was halted. So it took longer to thoroughly redesign cars with upgraded engineering, The first cars produced after the war were done so from existing pre-war designs, some designs of which had never seen production because they were to have been the next year’s cars that never happened due to the war happening. So those models were delayed by more than five years from original design to post war production, but by then engineering designs had advanced as had body design sensibilities based on the advancement in airplane technology and body designs. Look at the difference in aircraft designs from the advent of the war to end of the war. Those engineering and aesthetic sensibilities showed up in cars several years after the war.
And now, folks, you have plumbed the depths of most of my knowledge about such things. :))
I will add that all these conversations from which I gleaned my posted info occurred decades ago when I was far younger. So, I very well may have misunderstood or be mis-remembering and therefore have posted incorrect info. I gladly will stand corrected by others with better knowledge than I have on the subject.
Just as a humorous side bar, my grandmother for many years enjoyed a set of hanging flower planters made from a set of hubcaps gone wrong in the stamping process which left the metal configuration wrongly deep and with fluted edges. Apparently they proved quite functional and attractive as hanging planters! 
In 1958 I bought a 1948 Chevy “Stylemaster Deluxe” for $125.00 (no sales tax in those days). I used it till 1962 when I gave it to my kid brother in college, who used it another 4 years.
I notice that almost all of these purchases were many moons ago. What would the cost be in today’s dollars? For instance, $100 in 1960 is worth $790 today. $100 in 1970 is worth $603 today. Still great deals, but not quite as good as it sounds at first glance.
Yesterday’s $100 beater is today’s $1,000 beater car. If you can find a car for under $1K these days that lasts you a year or more and isn’t an affront to the senses or fogs for mosquitoes when you drive it, you’ve gotten a good deal.
@jtsanders I use an inflation factor of about 6 from the 50s to the present. A basic compact cost $2200 in the sixties and now it is about $13,000. So my stovebolt 6 1948 Chevy would cost $750 today. That’s what we sold out 1994 Nissan Sentra for in 2012.
1961- I bought a 52 Plymouth for $20 dollars. It ran great and we even went on vacation in it. Room for 6 and a great ride. Bough in Feb. and sold in October because we couldn’t keep the dog in the car . He could crawl out under the doors because of rust holes.
I used the US government CPI.
1971 Buick Centurion. I needed new tires for my 72 Sedan DeVille so I bought the car for $250 from the dealer who got it in trade. They didn’t look in the trunk where I found two gallons of antifreeze, battery cables, brake shoes which went on my 76 Impala, brake fluid, quarts of oil and a set of ignition wires.
I put the aftermarket stereo cassette in my Lincoln. I traded the radiator for a Ford radiator which I sold for $40. I sold a brake rotor/hub. I removed all the light sockets and bulbs and put them in my box full of bulbs and fuses. Then I had a junkyard tow it away and got $25 for it.