Why?

I have a used car. if I put $1,000 into repairs for it and get 12 months out of it. I win.

Can I lease or buy an equivalent car for $1000/yr, $83 a month? Usually not.

If I could, how much would the value deprecate in a year? More than $1,000? Most likely

$1,000 into a used car can be the wisest thing. I pretty much drive my cars till I hit 250,000 miles. It takes another $4k to usually go from 200k-250k usually because timing belt, valve cover and expensive routine maintenance comes up. But $4k to drive 50k miles? Totally worth it.