I owned a car for a while, a 1982 VH Holden Commodore station wagon got it for $400, it was working, however I just did not have the time to do the repairs to get it pass a road worthy test. Apart from a oil leak it was running pretty much fine.
It looked exactly like this
I am planning on buying another car in a couple of months. Since I can only drive automatic transmission vehicles, small cars are out for me because
a lot of them on the market are manuals and automatic transmission ones I want to stay away from.
I am either going to buy a 10-15 year old Toyota Camry or a Mitsubishi Magna (the top end ones the Veradas got exported to the USA and were called the Diamante). I can get a 10 year old Magna with less than 150,000 kms for $5000 for a dealership, the only small cars which are that age and cost that much are Hyundai's, Daewoos and Kias.
My budget is only $5000 because of the amount of money I will have to pay on insurance, up to $30 a week.
All these cars come with the same engine V6, around 3 liters, although some of the Camry's I have been looking have a 2.2 liter 4 cylinder engine. But considering the size of the vehicle, The Camrys which came out after 1993 were quite large car the fuel consumption savings would be tiny. Generally when a car reaches a certain size, a V6 engine provides more power for only minimal extra fuel economy and latest V6 cars are quite fuel efficient averaging 10 liters per 100km or 24 MPG in a combination of city and country driving.