Advice wanted on buying a used car

Hi, I'm buying my first car and I'm definitely getting one used. I've
noticed a lot of extremely cheap old cars - anything from £75 to
£1000. What are the pros and cons of such old cars? Obviously the main
disadvantage is increased repair costs, but roughly how unreliable
should I expect my cheapo car to be? And how much should I expect to
fork out in repair bills per year? I'm just looking for a very rough
idea. Is it likely something will go wrong every month? A few times a
year? Every so often? As a guide to what I've seen:

Ford Escort LX1.6 J reg £95
Rover 1.4SLi M reg £695
In both cases milage is not know (will check tomorrow) but for this
sort of price I would expect it to be high.

As a bit of background I'm starting a business and need the car for
that - so mainly short distance city driving with occaisonal long
distance. If I bought a cheap car I could drive it for a few months or
a year and see if things work out and then buy something newer when I
have the definite income.

All replies to newsgroup please - I won't get e-mails as I'm using a
"catch spam" address.

I have bought a lot of $50.00 or less beaters over the years and I
usually get about 3 years out of them.

That said, I am very mechanically inclined and do my own work normally
with used parts on these old things.

If I had to pay someone to keep up with all the little things for
repair, it would cost me more per year than new car payments.

Yes, you can get 'lucky' and find a cheapie that doesn't need a mess of
tinkering, but not normally.

I recommend whatever car you decide on you take it to a good mechanic
and have him give it a good inspection before you buy. That could be
the best $75.00 ever spent on the vehicle.

Mike
86/00 CJ7 Laredo, 33x9.5 BFG Muds, 'glass nose to tail in '00
88 Cherokee 235 BFG AT's

Rykk wrote:
>
> Hi, I'm buying my first car and I'm definitely getting one used. I've
> noticed a lot of extremely cheap old cars - anything from £75 to
> £1000. What are the pros and cons of such old cars? Obviously the main
> disadvantage is increased repair costs, but roughly how unreliable
> should I expect my cheapo car to be? And how much should I expect to
> fork out in repair bills per year? I'm just looking for a very rough
> idea. Is it likely something will go wrong every month? A few times a
> year? Every so often? As a guide to what I've seen:
>
> Ford Escort LX1.6 J reg £95
> Rover 1.4SLi M reg £695
> In both cases milage is not know (will check tomorrow) but for this
> sort of price I would expect it to be high.
>
> As a bit of background I'm starting a business and need the car for
> that - so mainly short distance city driving with occaisonal long
> distance. If I bought a cheap car I could drive it for a few months or
> a year and see if things work out and then buy something newer when I
> have the definite income.
>
> All replies to newsgroup please - I won't get e-mails as I'm using a
> "catch spam" address.