I am the youngest of three boys in my family. We were born 3 years apart from one another. SO, what that means is that my parents could have potentially had three male drivers under the age of 21 on the insurance at the same time.
To prevent that from happening, my parents made a deal with me that if I waited until I HAD to get my license, they would buy me a car. They had similar arrangements with all three of us if we waited until we 'had' to have a license.
So the summer I graduated high school Dad and I started looking for a good used car. My two older brothers went to college and still lived at home, but that wasn't what I wanted to do, so I was going to need a car that was a lot more reliable, and able to take longer trips than my older brothers.
I wasn't at all selective about what type of car, so that made the search that much easier.
I ended up getting a 1997 Suzuki Esteem with 45,000 miles on it for $4,500
I finally sold the car for $500 in 2006 and it had almost 145,000 miles on it.
The only repair that was done on the car was a clutch replacement, and I had to have to the right front tie rod replaced two times. That was about $120 each time.
So to invest less than $1,000 in car repairs and put around 100,000 miles on it - I think that was a great deal!
My next car was a 2006 Ford Focus and I never had to do anything other than change the oil in the 5 years that I owned it.
With the cost of new smaller cars coming down - you might want to check out the price of a NEW Ford Fiesta. Ford is doing amazing things their smaller cars!
If you want to stay away from high cost small repairs, avoid 'luxury' imports if at all possible.
The cars on it that likely would meet your criteria:
