First car: 1987 Honda Prelude $1000
Second car: 1985 Nissan 300zx $2,700
Third Ca-err, Vehicle: 1999 Ford Ranger $9,000
Fourth Car: sharing my wifes Altima because the truck died...

Curses...

I payed $200 for a 1985 GTI a couple years back. Not a bad little car, but I ended up selling it a few months later since I wasn't down with the power steering that it had. I prefer my old-school VW's to have manual racks.

$300 for an '87 Relient K in 1999...ran like a dream for almost 4 years

86' Audi 4000 = $150

Not counting the 'gimmes' from my father-in-law (beater Taurus and Celebrity wagons, $1 each) I bought a 63' Studebaker Lark for $175. There wasn't a body panel on that car that didn't have a dent or rust-through.

Drove it a couple years and sold it for $250 to guy who needed the windshield and front bumper, both of which were in really good shape.

$100 for a 1974 VW bug

$118 for a rusty 1952 Mercedes 220S off of ebay

.....the bug was a better deal!

In 1997 I paid $400 for a 1984 VW Scirocco with a 5 speed. About 6 months later I blew the fuel injection system up and was looking at a $800 bill. Later I saw it in the junkyard and pulled the emblems off of it and found my old registration in the glove box.

$75 for a 1976 Pontaic Grand Safari. The deal was I told the owner that if he ever wanted to sell his car to let me know. Three months later I get a call from the gentleman. He tells me that the engine had siezed and if I'd pay for the towing to his mechanic I could have it. Well I had it towed to my mechanic, he checked it out and it need a battery and a new ground wire!
So being the honest person that I am and very aware of Karma I called the owner and told him. He was impressed with my honesty and told me to keep the car!

I wonder what the Sultan of Brunei's answer would be?

I bought a '91 Escort GT with unknown mileage for $150. It had been slightly lowered and had a "performance" exhaust system. Unfortunately, if also had no interior. Seats, steering wheel and tach.
I drove it for six months, didn't bother changing the oil, and sold it for $500, so it actually end up costing me -$350. That's pretty cheap.

@Drujon: cool move on both of your parts...

$650 1959 Austin Healy Sprite from my cousin.

$1 for tax purposes. got my moms 1992 dodge caravan. promptly spray painted racing stripes on it [8 inch each]

and imagined i was driving somthing cooler... until the intake valve broke off inside the cylinder.

good stuff

Slow day for car news, huh?

1992 Saab 900 S $4,995

$300 for a 1983 Chrysler New Yorker... Complete with rich Corinthian Leather and the robot voice.

$200 for a 1989 Geo Metro 3-cylinder that my buddy owned--this was in 1999. We had painted Viper-style racing stripes on the hood year earlier using Dutch Boy exterior paint, to annoy the guys at our high school who were putting racing stripes on everything. It was a great car until the valves disintegrated. The mechanic who did the post-mortem said there was zero compression on all 3 cylinders. I wear that as a badge of honor.

$150 for a 90 Honda Civic. Took 90 bucks to get it running and it was totalled three weeks later when a drunk ran a red light. I got $4500 from the insurance company. Not a bad investment if I do say so myself.

Free 1983 Volvo 244 DL, about 2 months ago. Wasn't running at the time, had been sitting for about a year. New wiring harness (Ebay, $150 and about 5 hours) minor tune-up, now it's a great running car! The guy I got it from handed me a folder with EVERY service record/oil change receipt since 1982 when he bought it. The thing was meticulously maintained.

1959 Morris Minor - $75.

My first car was an '85 Accord with at least 235k miles on the clock (odo quit there). Paid $200 for it in 1996.

My dad bought it brand new in November 1984. I still remember waiting downstairs at Rockford Honda, and seeing our new car as it came around the corner.

Dad drove it until 1993, when my aunt and uncle came back to the States for a summer (they were on sabbatical from their work as missionaries in the Central African Republic). They and their two young boys drove that thing all over the country, racking up 15k miles and trashing the interior. When we sold it to them, we warned them not to pull the handbrake, as the cable would freeze. Sure enough, the last week they were here in the US, my little cousin yanked the damn thing.

As they prepared to go back to the Lord's Work in darkest Africa, a family friend - Mark Borell, RIP - offered to take the Accord off their hands. He drove it as a commuter car for a year or two and did some minor repairs to try and reverse the carnage that my family had wrought. Well, Mark got sick of having an old beater taking up space in the garage that would be better used as storage for a Corvette restoration project, so he sold it to yet another family friend, Phil. Phil never drove the damn thing...it sat in his garage with a bum alternator for over a year. He offered to sell it to soon-to-be-16 year old PeteJayhawk for the heady price of $350. That's a lot of lawns to mow, so Phil knocked it down to $200. Family friends come in handy.

Well, we got it to my garage, fixed the alternator (the belt needed tightening, that was all), and clandestinely drove it all over the greater Rockford area that summer, waiting for my glorious arrival at 16 years of age.

3 months after I became a legal driver, the damn thing dropped the exhaust system onto the road. 2 weeks later, the clutch gave up the ghost. And the brakes? They hadn't worked right in years. I took the car to Midas to get a quote: $1400. I sold it to the mechanic for $250, and never saw it again. Can you believe it? I made $50 on that piece of shit.

I paid $200 for a 1982 Mercury Zephyr with a four cylinder engine and a four speed stick. It had a new exhaust system and was Maryland state inspected (probably shady, but I didn't/don't care). That car was hilarious, old school vent windows and the vents on the sides of the car worked to let in air on hot days (no a/c).

Drove it for a few years later when the carb went, then sold it for 300 to somebody so that they could drop in a 427.

$200 for a 260Z parts car for the '72 & '73 240zs I was refreshing which I paid $2500 & $1800 for. Sold the last one off about 7 years ago. (insert frowny face)

First car: 1959 Austin Healey 3000 Mk1, gotten for free because the floors were stolen by the evil rustmonster. Along with a series of cars provided by dad ('87 F-350 diesel crew cab 4x4, '89 F150, '88 Merkur Scorpio, '85 Mustang GT convertible)
High school years brought a '63 Fairlane for $250 and a '66 F100 bought for $4500.
As for dumb luck, an orange 1970 Boss 429 for $5k (they were asking $7500) in 1987.
And my current $3495 '97 Buick Century bought 6 years ago. Doesn't get tickets, doesn't get stolen... doesn't get ass. :-(

1969 Falcon 4 door, rattle can Ford engine blue with pretty straight black stripes and chrome wheels, $150. The guy was going to boot camp. He came back from the Army a year later, sold it back to him for $125 without the chrome wheels, which went on to a crappy fox body Mustang I got for $400.

I forgot! $350 dollars for a 1927 Model T 4 door. Black, of course, with wire wheels.

And the Sprite was an Austin-HEALEY.

$300 for a 1981 volvo 240 in 2005. Put 20,000 miles on it, then sold it for $800. (I did put new tires on it, and did maintenance, but I came out okay).

$150.00 for a '46 Ford - Gawd, I wish I still had that car - there was NO rust!

$35 for an 1960's Mini Cooper, maybe an S. It didn't run, my neighbor had it and said the junkyard told him thay would give him $35 for it. I bought it and drug it home through the woods between our houses with a tractor. I was 17 at the time and realized that it was a much bigger project than I could handle. sold it for parts two weeks later for $600. thus started my high school career of autobroker. I even put an ad in the local penny pincher newspaper "wanted old sports cars". I would find the cars, check them out and get a finders fee of $100-$200 from a local foreign car junkyard, who only paid about $100-$500 for the cars. Found some interesting stuff: Jaguar 420G, MGA, E-type project with no engine. this was in the early 1990s.

£50 + 200 cigarettes for a 1984 escort,it lasted about 3 months. But hey,having shit like that when you are a kid makes you appriciate the good things now.

$350 a couple years ago for a 1987 VW Golf coupe. It ran at the time, but I have since fixed that problem...

will be returning as a rat rod and running 10s!

In 1963 I bought a 1951
Plymouth 2-door sedan for $10.00
Drove it for 7 months and sold it for $25.00. Only car I ever made money on.
"Those were the days"

Here in the UK I bought a 1.1L Peugeot 309 for £75 (about $140) which had Mot and Tax, which was amazing considering that a.) I could cash in the tax for £60 and b.) It had an MOT considering it was an utter heap

I drove it til that ran out and sold it to a scrapyeard for £10.

Seven dollars and ninety five cents... From a dealer. It came to $15.32 out the door.

I was walking through a car lot because I used to go hang out at them to torture myself as I had no car. Salesman approaches me "can I help you?". I have nothing better to do so I point at a Vista Cruiser in the bargain row and ask how much (this was 20 or more years ago).

Salesman comes back with "That one's sold but we have 2 more for seven ninety five". I respond with the fact that I don't have $795 and he says "No, seven dollars and ninety five cents" and points at two very homely cars sitting on flat tires.

Turns out it's a sales gimmick, first people to show up kind of thing. Unfortunately they DID sell that damn Vista Cruiser for $7.95 before I got there. I pointed at the nastiest old Bel Air I had ever seen and said it it starts, I'll buy it.

Oh it started all right. It was a straight 6 with torn up seats and a really bad front suspension. It burned through passenger side front tires like nobodies business. 1 junkyard tire every two weeks or so.

We drove it for 2 years.

In '88 or so, I picked up an '82 X-11 with a bad engine.

Except that all that was wrong was a mouse had chewed through a vacuum line, separately, an air pump that provided vacuum to the brake booster (dunno why) was loosely mounted and vibrated the crap out of the car when it kicked on.

So, a flawless 6-year-old car for 400 clams. Then, one winter, my sister borrowed the gas cap and forgot and, a short comedy of errors later, the motor was seized. I still hate her.

My buddy and I split the $100 dollar cost on a beat up brown 74 Impala. We ended up donating it to a guy who ran demo derbies at Wall speedway in Wall, N.J.

$400 for a VW Fox!

Cheapest ... -$425. '88 Volvo 760GLE with the revised frog motor that was sideswiped, causing a slight tweak in the 'frame' in front of the car. Banged out the fender, slotted the holes so it didn't look as tweeked, replaced the front spindle, drove it like I stole it (those Firestones sure burned rubber easily!), and resold it just 1k miles later when the a/c died. Got twice what what I paid for it, hence the negative price. The buyer knew it was tweeked, but it drove straight, so he didn't care.

I put (much) more money into the next vehicle ... a '94 Buick Roadmonster Estate, complete with the fake woodgrain (and I wasn't even 30 yet!). 50% more weight, double the power, and still got better fuel economy.

@OrangeBoss9: please tell me you still have the Boss...

My ex got an 85 camry from her uncle for free in 98. We just had to drive it from Miami to nyc. My ex didn't really like to drive, I was basically the caretaker of the car and her chauffeur. That car ran like a champ. And actually handled way way better than today's camry. Unfortunately, one night, I hit an oil slick at an offramp and hopped a curb, ripping off the transmission pan and part of the transmission body. The guy in the tow truck said it was totaled, but the guys at the shop bolted on a new transmission pan, put fluid in it and it continued to run well for three more years. One bright sunny day driving on 87 going up to New Paltz, I hit the accelerator to pass a car and the transmission, on it's attempt to downshift, quietly just gave out and died. We coasted to the side of the road and caught a tow back home. The funny thing about that car was it had a sport button on the tranny. It actually would hold revs higher before shifting with it on. Which would get you from 0-60 in 16 seconds instead of 18.

Once I went in with a few friends on a ~1990 Ford Festiva; we gave the guy a case of Budwiser and he gave us the car. It had a stick shift, we welded in a roll cage (of sorts), and drove it like we stole it around my friend's farm for a week, until we could not patch it back together anymore.

A friend of mine got his Escort because his dad painted his aunt's house. He then bought a second Escort as a parts car for $100 (he only swapped out radios) before selling it to me for $100.

I also bought a Probe for $100, although while towing it home, I accidentally took out the bumper on an Aerostar, which cost another $1000.

Got a '93 Lumina for free because the fuel pump had quit and my buddy abandoned it behind his landlord's barn. $12 for a boneyard fuel pump later, and I drove that sucker for two years and sold it for $1500 bucks. I almost feel guilty.

I've been messing around with cars for more that 25 years and because of that I've been on the receiving end of many freebies. The best one was about 2 years ago. I was given a 1994 Taurus SHO. The previous owner thought the timing belt went, but when I got it home and had a good look all it needed was the DIS module. It turned out to be a great runner! I sold it to a friend in need for the price of the module and tune-up parts I put on it. He got it for $300.00.

I've also been given an 84 Eagle SX4-Got it running and gave it away, a 1995 Dakota 4wd. (fire damage) an 86 f-150 fixed and gave it away, and recently a clean 1996 f-150 that needs and engine.

Low cost cars: 76 Mustang II V8, purchased in 1986 for $400.00.

10 bucks for my first car in 1984, a '73 Impala Custom Classic Coupe, maroon with black half-vinyl top. i wish i still had it. sold for 200 bucks two yeas later.

second car was a 78 or 79 fiat strada 4 door hatch, 200 bucks, sold for 250 a few years later.

i assume free cars don't count, but i have had one of those.

i am currently looking for any air cooled VW that runs and drives, for the least amount of money possible - hopefully under 500 bucks. anyone got one near chicago?

In order of prices paid (year purchased):

$1 - '91 S10 (was my dad's) (1997)
$1 - '88 Cherokee (friend of the family) (2003)
$4 - '63 Corvette (won on $4 worth of raffle tickets) (1997)
$500 - '87 Jaguar XJS (2007)
$800 - '87 Ford F150 (2004)
$1000 - "87 MR2 (1998)
$1150 - '76 Triumph Spitfire (1993)
$1500 - '98 Buick Skylark (2004)
$2026 - '79 Checker Marathon (2004)
$2100 - '88 Chevy K1500 (2006)
$2200 - '89 Chevy S10 (2004)
$4500 - '86 MR2 (1996)
$7000 - '92 Maxima (worst car ever) (2000)

I currently own just the '87 Jag, the '88 K1500, and the '79 Checker.

These are purchase prices only and don't take into account how much I eventually put into any of them.

Aside from anomalies (raffles/friends/family), the least I've paid was $500 for the Jag.

a friend in high school and my self bought a car for $40 cnd. that is $20 each. it was a Plymouth belvedere station wagon, highway department yellow. we bbmbed around him fields for a few days and then parked. a year later we sold it for $200.

should "say bombed around his fields"

My first car was a Saturn SL with about 175k miles on it. It was sold to a family friend for a dollar with over 200k miles. I believe it's still running strong.

In 2002 I paid $300 for a 1985 VW GTI with 280,000 miles and a shot clutch. After replacing the clutch myself, it was the best car I've ever owned.

I've always been proud of the $800 Golf Diesel I bought a few years ago.
I put 80K miles on it before it passed on.
Turns out that you chaps are better bargain hunters than I.