While I was reading Patrick George's excellent writeup on driving two classic V8 luxury barges, I had a bit of a revelation: a Mercedes W126 and a Miata would make the perfect two car garage for under $10k.
Allow me to explain–with the Miata you get a fun, fuel efficient, roadster that's both a great sports car and an economical city car. With the Benz you get a large luxurious car that's perfect for long trips and wafting around town. What more could you want? They're perfectly suited for each other.
Both are reliable and simple enough to work on in your driveway, so you won't need to worry about spending a fortune on repairs, and old enough that insurance wouldn't be too bad.
Neither of them are particularly fast by modern standards, but who cares! They're both fun as hell to drive and you can have both for under $10k! Don't believe me?
Here's a clean 1990 Miata on cars.com with only 110k miles for just $4,500. It even comes with a hardtop which you could easily sell to people making a spec Miata racer. Sure the 1.6 liter cars were slow but speed wasn't the point, it was about the feeling.
For the other garage bay we've got a 1991 Mercedes-Benz 350SD for just $4,550 also on cars.com. This one's got the rare 3.5 straight six diesel which was only offered in '91 and is good for 136 hp and 229 ft/lbs. of torque. Again, you're not going to be winning stoplight drag races, but you will be getting effortless, smooth performance. Plus old diesel Mercs will run forever if treated well.
So all the car you would ever need/want for just $9,050. A nice price if I do say so myself.
Now I'd like to turn it over to you. I doubt you'll come up with anything better than me, but you can sure as hell try. Has to be two cars totaling $10k or less and you've got to put the links to the listing in your comment.
Get to it!
Photo Credit: Mercedes-Benz/Mazda/cars.com