A friend of mine does that too. Instead of stretching a little to buy a decent car, he gets cheap junkers and spends all his time and energy for weeks at a time fixing them up. And then they break down constantly in really inconvenient places like the middle of the desert in August. Yet he swears by not having to ever make car payments. I don't get it.

I bought an inexpensive, year-old car and never have had any trouble with it.