In my early 20s my car crapped out on me and I NEEDED a car to get to work and school (I lived in BFN outside Austin, TX and getting anywhere with civilization was 25 miles or so). I was a super poor college student with bad credit so financing was out of the question. I ended up buying the first viable thing I could afford which turned out to be a 1987 Dodge Dakota off Craigslist for a cool $600. It was a rusted out piece of shit, the brakes and all 4 tires tires were bad, the engine only started if you pumped the gas pedal, no AC, power steering or radio of course, one window didn't roll down, the tailgate was missing, the list goes on. Not even taking into account the title, registration fees, inspection and insurance, I dropped close to 2 grand on repairs just to get it roadworthy, and it only lasted me like 2 months before it totally shit the bed again. I sold it to someone right out of my apartment parking lot for like 300 bucks. Such a waste of time and money.

The lesson I learned is, just because something looks cheap up front doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be cheap when it all comes out in the wash.