You can’t find a good car for $1000, but you can find plenty of “good for $1000” cars.

The strategy here is to find something that runs now, and maximize the chances that you can get 6-12 additional months’ use out of without making a major repair. In net this comes out much cheaper than making a car payment, but you’d better have an extra $1000 in the bank because you may need another one just like it in three years, or in a week.

This strategy works somewhat better if you have $2-3K to spend, but really you are looking for the cheapest possible car that meets these criteria:

• Starts and runs without obvious wrong noises or clouds of oil smoke
• Shifts without hesitation into all gears including reverse
• Has no outstanding safety issues (missing seat belts or airbags, non-working brakes, exhaust leaks, broken axles)
• Has no difficult-to-fix issues that would make it illegal or uninsurable (ie. missing or modified catalytic converter where these are inspected yearly, or lack of a title)

Make doesn’t matter, odometer mileage doesn’t matter (high mileage is actually better in a $1000 car). Looks don’t matter. You can’t have pride and drive a $1K car, sorry.

A great idea for a car like this is to negotiate a final test drive of 50+ miles (highway and stop and go) over the course of an hour or so (agreeing to pay for the gas). If the car survives this without overheating or other disasters, it is likely to do it every day for some time to come. It’s also a good way to get a real feel for what it’s going to be like living with this particular beast.

You may have to kiss a few frogs, but eventually you will find your prince of a jalopy.

At this point your mission in life is to keep that sucker running as long as possible without dropping major dollars into it. Replace any suspect batteries, belts and hoses up front, don’t wait for a failure which could kill a car on the edge. Know how to check and fill all fluids and do that often. Drive it often, every day if possible. This is your mileage mule, whip it mercilessly.

Keep a cell phone in your pocket and (again) money in the bank. When something goes wrong that will cost more than $150 to fix (belts, hoses and batteries again; something like an alternator replacement is a reasonable stopping point here), call your local charity, take the tax write off, and move on.

$1000 to buy a car is not alot of money, however, buying a used car for under $1000 is possible. You are going to be finding that most of the cars that fit inside this parameter are cars that are older than 20 years and have over 150,000 miles. 

There are a few brands that will hold their value and work out for you to use as a commuter. Here are the top 5 models that if you can find will be a good value for $1000.