people could think of me a slightly mad but let me explain......
I spend a lot of time in my cars, because of this, or possibly because of my general interest in cars but i don't buy cars to make money, however i do like to spend time fixing them as well was driving them.
I have been watching a few cars on both autotrader and Ebay, good ones are fetching 2250-2500 now the plan was to take this, fix the engine. get the rest of it straight and then use it in the same way that i did the Elite, ie up to about 150,000-160,000 and then start again, bearing in mind that will be 2 years worth of motoring for me.
Now in that time i will spend a lot more that the car is worth, i spent over 8K in 2 years on the Elite

however that does include petrol and gas as well as servicing costs, so i have budgeted for that as well.
In answer to the 'why not buy a car that is newer? Simple, in 2 years time with 150,000 miles on it, i will still be able to get 1-1.5K for it my loss will be nominal, where as to buy a secondhand car with 30K on it (10K) and then put 50k on it in 2 years will devalue it sooo much i would lose much more on face value.
I could get to the garage tomorrow and find that the diff is on ots way out of it needs discs and pads all round, something as simple as that could be the end of the road for it, or it could run again for another 100K if we rebuild it.....
who knows