Crummy picture, but here was arguably one of my favorite former minimalist vehicles:



This car helped me through some bad times. At the time, we only had one car and I was counting on rides to work. Then, the place I was working closed down (fortunately, with sufficient warning for me to find another job). My new job was 30 miles away and none of my co-workers lived near me, so it was off to find a 2nd vehicle. With severance pay from my previous job, I had a $900 budget to get something reliable enough to make a 60 mile round trip each day.

After finding lots of barely running rustbuckets in my price range, a friend told us that her brother had this car just sitting around and might sell it. I ended up driving away with it for $400. It was 20 years old at the time and had about 75k miles on the odo. It ran reliably for two years, other than the long term effects of living in the salt belt (Indiana).

I'd buy another one for a fun vehicle any time.
_________________________
2002 Just Blue XE 4x4