Reddit mentions of The Gold-Plated Porsche: How I Sank a Small Fortune into a Used Car, and Other Misadventures

A few years back I restored/fixed up a 87 924s. Without going into the details, I bought it for $2200, sold it after about a year for $2500 after having put probably $5000 into it. Finally sold it because I got tired of the what's going to break next feeling.

I suggest that you look at older Boxsters. Searching on cars.com I found quite a few in the sub-10k range. You may have to finance, but you will have a regular payment, and after a year you will still have a car that is worth ~8k. What got me with the 924 was every couple of months something would break that would take money and time to fix--averaged out a car payment would have been cheaper. The other plus side of the Boxster is that by virtue of being post 1996 it will have an odb2 port which makes diagnostics a whole lot easier. Also don't forget performance, a 88 944 had a 0-60 time of 8.5s, a 99 Boxster clocks in at 6.3s that is a very noticeable difference.

Two bits of wisdom from two different friends. When I told one guy about the 924 he told me, "you'll keep it until you get tired of fixing it," he'd recently sold a 68 mustang he'd had for years. Another guy told me (and I think this is true of almost any car unless you are a professional mechanic with a shop and lots of experience,) "it's cheaper to buy a car at a certain level of condition than it is to bring a car up to that level."

You might also want to check this out

http://www.amazon.com/Gold-Plated-Porsche-Small-Fortune-Misadventures/dp/B001QCX2II/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1373814566&sr=1-1&keywords=gold+plated+porsche