Before my current 98 civic I owned a beater I picked up for $400
1990 Ford Escort GT
Was purchased off a mechanic who had no time to fix anything so it was pretty much rigged to just work in the cheapest way possible. Radiator fan was aftermarket connected to a toggle switch, a/c condenser ripped out, literally lines cut where it'd be, bunch of electrical wires cut and left dangling. Thing was scary to drive and would randomly stall (a distributor wire was chaffed and would occasionally ground itself out)
But the beauty was my mechanic at the time told me not to bring it in for repairs anymore because it was too time consuming to figure out, ultimately that lead me to want to tackle things/learn about cars so in a way I'm glad it happened.
It was lowered on saggy rear stock springs and cut front springs. Ford emblem was removed and the holes on the grill were filled in and painted. Clear(er) corners from an older Mercury lynx which was basically a Ford escort in the Mercury line.
I felt "cool" driving this thing around because everyone was into imports so much (first fast n furious movie period) and it was different. It had surprisingly good low end torque which was fun. I remember thinking civics were supposed to be these fast cars due to the hype about "vtec", so when I first test drove a civic and didn't notice any torque in comparison to my car, I remember ignorantly assuming that there had to be something mechanically wrong and passed up purchasing it lol
This is what it looked like a year before the clutch went as well as idle problems that couldn't be figured out and floors rotting which led me to sell to a junk yard.