What was your least expensive used car purchase?

General Discussion
41

1966 bought 1953 Buick Special $40. Drove it East Coast to Colorado and sold it for $100.
1970 bought 1963 Plymouth wagon for $80, drove it to Colorado again, and then
1970 bought 1946 Chev pickup for $300 in great shape, and towed it back to the East Coast with the Plymouth, that blew up right after that.
1971 Bought 1964 Corvair Monza for $400, drove it for 2 years.
1972 bought a 1961 Olds station wagon for $100 for a guy who used it for a while and then it was stolen.
1973 bought a 1964 Plymouth wagon, standard shift V8 for $250 and drove it (and lived in it) from the East to Canada, to Montana, to Utah, to Los Angeles and San Francisco, and that was it.
1974 bought a 1965 Pontiac Tempest for $150 and drove it for several years and the ran head on into a tree in the snow, end of Pontiac. Great car.
1974 or 75 bought a 66 Tempest Convertible for $200, drove it until 1976 and then it rusted out and broke in half.
1975 bought a 64 Chev Pickup for $200 or so, drove it for 2 years, the cab twisted off the frame after rust ate it up, it ran all the way to the junkyard.

These days I buy old Honda scooters from the 80’s for $500 or so, fix them up, and ride them all over town. They run and run. I confess I have 2 good cars in the garage.

42

In addition to the $100 plus cars, I will have to say that I paid $500 for my 59 VW Bug in must have been 1967. It was about the upper limit of what I wanted to pay and it was a trade in at a Rolls Royce dealer so that maybe added a few hundred to it. The guy doing the transaction even wore cuff links and a starched white shirt. He had taken his suit coat off though maybe just to make me feel better. This kid buying this old car wnen everyone else was interested in the Rolls. Maybe figured I’d be back some day for a Rolls.

43

Bought my dad’s minivan for $1 when he stopped driving. '89 Caravan. White with burgundy pin stripes. 4 cylinder, 3-speed auto. 0-60 in a week or so. Chick. Magnet. :wink:

But the thing was a beast in the winter. I never got stuck in it. Even when the plow would leave a 2 foot wall at the end of my driveway, it would just blast through. And I still miss its hauling capacity.

I’ve always gotten good deals on non-family used cars too. I paid 2 grand back in '01 for a mint-condition CRX. Still have that one. The factory paint still looks brand new, but I upgraded the engine, so it’s faster now. I’ve been offered a LOT more than I paid for it by random people who see it when I drive it.

And I only paid 2 grand in '04 for a 93 MR2, which I also still have. That one required a lot more work, but I got it for less than I should have because the lady just wanted it gone. It’s also rust-free, which is a bonus, but I’ve put a good deal of money into upgrading its appearance, and am now trying to figure out whether I want to replace the engine mounts and clutch cylinders for around $600 or just swap in a bigger engine. Decisions, decisions… :wink:

44

How about $350 for a car a little over one year ago in 2012? I actually bought TWO running and driving Geo Metros for $700 in the late summer of 2012 and have been driving one ever since. Both came to me with problems. Both were 1994, hatchback, 3 cylinder, 5 speed, and had the same emissions package so parts are a direct swap. I didn’t consider either one road worthy but drove both home for DIY repairs. The one I am driving today had major engine issues as these cars are known for burning exhaust valves and one of the 3 cylinders had ZERO compression.

The other car had been converted so a redneck farm truck if you want to call it that. It looked like one side of the car had been near a fire as the paint was melted/bubbled up and the turn signal light covers were melted and deformed. They spray painted the entire thing camouflage over the original red and then cut the back hatch part out and made a back window out of plywood and Plexiglas held in by angle iron they welded in. This was a really crappy job and they had other old junk keeping the seats from leaning back into the back window. There was no weather proofing and all the water just ran into the underbody and rusted it out plus it smelled like mold and mouse urine. My plan was to sell this one all along but I soon realized the extent of the rust and other problems that would have been very expensive to fix. Basically, I am surprised the thing didn’t fall apart on the way home but the engine seemed to run great. I decided to swap the engine from this car into the one with the burned valve and go from there. I did this, stripped all useful parts off this one as it was identical to the other, and sold the hulk as scrap metal.

I replaced the engine, brakes, most hoses, belts, clutch/pressure plate, timing belt/water pump, wires, suspension, etc. during the engine changeover as most of these things were shot. The brakes were metal on metal, and several other things were not OK. The best part is that I was able to lift the engine and clutch assembly in and out of the car by myself. I just picked it up and swapped it in which was pretty amazing. Light little 3 cylinder engines made of aluminum…

Well, the engine ran great but seemed to start burning more and more oil with time. I think my expensive synthetic was cleaning out the gunk holding the thing together. It was also puking oil through the PCV/breather hose right into the intake where it was burning, fogging out massive clouds of oil smoke. I mean this was the smoke that would cause everyone on both sides of the interstate highway to pull over and wait for it to clear. This only happened on long uphill grades or headwinds when the engine was under load and there was lots of blowby which kept oil in the valve cover from draining back down. This is another known quirk of these little cars when an engine has been neglected or worn out. I replaced the PCV valve several times with parts from multiple parts stores thinking I had maybe gotten a defective one or certain aftermarket ones were junk.

I tried several snake oil treatments for stuck rings and such but all these did was dissolve more gunk and the oil burning/smoking just got worse. The odd thing is that the little engine ran great and was getting 50+ mpg without any issues but I had to add 1 quart of oil at least once per 100 miles. I pretty much would always add 1 quart of oil at 100 miles without even looking and then check to see how much more of a partial quart I needed to add. I tried changing the oil at quick intervals to see if something would clean out and it would be black as night by 100 miles after the change. I guess there was enough sludge and blowby to dirty the oil quickly. I could see that the engine internals were pretty covered in brown goo from under the oil fill cap and when I had the oil pan off to redo the gasket. The oil use and smoke just kept getting worse and I began looking for another engine or considering rebuilding one.

I found a guy who had a Metro that was being junked due to rust (the front control arm came off while driving) with a good engine. I knew what to look for and saw no sludge inside the engine or inside the intake from oil puking through the PCV system. I figured it was a good engine so traded him a .30-30 deer rifle for the engine. I took it home and did another swap all by myself and re-used most of the new parts I had bought. The clutch disc still had the factory writing on it so this was re-used. The car now runs great and has never let me down. I run synthetic oil and see no smoke and the oil level doesn’t drop at all between changes. I couldn’t be happier and would trust the car anywhere. These are such simple little cars plus I have plenty of spare parts stored away in bins from the junker car.

It starts up everyday and gets 50+ mpg. Sure, it is a beater but you can’t beat it for just driving around.

45

@shadowfax One of my buddies in the National Guard had a shiny new Caravan in 1988. We were doing training at the Oregon coast. A couple of much younger troops borrowed the van to go into town and pick up chicks! I’m sure it was a great “chick magnet” with the 2 kiddie seats in the back!

46

My father gave me his 1954 Chevrolet 4 door sedan 6 cylinder 3 speed column shift when I was 13 years old. Free is the least I have ever paid for a vehicle! I was allowed to drive it up and down our gravel street. Learning to drive a clutch came in handy the next year when I had a job driving old military Jeeps with “crash box” transmissions hauling irrigation pipe trailers. To this day I can still double clutch perfectly (most of the time) as modern vehicles don’t seem to comprehend that maneuver!

47

Forgot, bought my grandfather’s 1976 Ford E150 van for a $100 when he got a newer conversion van. The body was starting to look a little like swiss cheese, but the I6-300 motor, while pretty weak, was solid and may still be running somewhere. I used that van for transporting supplies/equipment for work for a few years, then junked it for $50 when it was getting too rough to deal with any more: New starter every 6 months, gas gauge not working, radiator starting to leak, scary looking holes in the body.

My gf at one point bought a rusty Ford Ranger pickup at someone’s garage sale for $200 and drove the wheels off that little thing for years. Not a Ford fan, but I can’t really knock some of their vehicles.