I try to vary the price range of the cars we look at on here to keep things interesting, but I’m still a cheapskate at heart. I love finding a sub-$2,000 car that still looks like viable transportation, or at least something fun to putter around with. And if it’s something unusual and friendly-looking? Even better. We’re going to look at two such cheerful bargains today.
I fully expected yesterday‘s vote to come down in favor of the Audi, and I was right. That Pontiac is a cool conversation piece, but it’s overpriced, and it needs plenty of work to put it back into regular service. The Audi is ready to go, and it’s still in the prime of its life. I’m not surprised you preferred it.
These both push the nostalgia button for me, because I grew up with a bunch of VW/Audi products, and the mayor of my hometown owned a Pontiac dealership, so they were by far the most common GM vehicles around. I really want to want that 6000 STE, but there are a lot of other late-80s GM vehicles I’d rather have. The Audi A6 is a bit newer than the ones I grew up with, but the spirit is the same. I’m with the majority here.
I’ve never had much luck spending a lot of money on cars. Every time I decide to spend some actual money, in the form of a loan because I never have much cash saved up, I end up either regretting the car or the deal. So these days, I deal strictly in cash, which means I have to go cheap. I’m fine with it; I would rather have something I don’t have to stress out about, or carry collision insurance on. These two are very much in my wheelhouse, and one of them gets bonus points for being a rare car, and the other for being an excellent color. Let’s take a look.
1990 Daihatsu Charade SE – $2,000
Engine/drivetrain: 1.0-liter OHC inline 3, five-speed manual, FWD
Location: Blackwell, OK
Odometer reading: 70,000 miles
Operational status: Runs and drives well, but needs tires
Small, basic cars are all but gone from the US market these days, but in the late 80s and early 90s, it seemed like a new one was popping up every week. The Yugo won the low-price crown, followed closely by the Hyundai Excel. Chevy replaced the long-in-the-tooth Chevette with the Sprint, a captive import built by Suzuki. Ford countered with the Festiva, a badge-engineered Kia Pride. Subaru gave us the Justy. And a Japanese brand nobody in America had ever heard of, Daihatsu, started selling a tiny hatchback called the Charade.
Daihatsu’s dalliance with the American market only lasted four and a half model years, before new corporate boss Toyota pulled the plug, presumably to sell more Tercels. That’s kind of a shame, because the Charade was like a Chevy Sprint or Geo Metro, only more so. It has a fuel-injected three-cylinder engine, a five-speed gearbox, and is allegedly nicer to drive than a Metro. It’s not fast, obviously; it has only 53 horsepower to its name, which means that the 105 MPH speedometer is likely a work of pure fantasy. I mean, I know from experience that a Geo Metro will do 90, but I don’t recommend it. The seller says it runs and drives fine, but the idle fluctuates, meaning there’s probably a vacuum leak somewhere. It also needs new tires, which might be a bit hard to find. The seller says they’re 14 inch, but according to my sources, they’re actually 155/80R13 – which almost nobody stocks anymore.
You don’t go for a car like this expecting luxury, of course. It’s got seats, and a steering wheel, and a shift lever, and that’s about it. It does boast an aftermarket stereo with some big speaker enclosures in the rear hatch, and fuzzy covers over the seats and steering wheel. I like that the seller is honest about the condition of the seats; apparently they’re “not great” under the covers. I imagine they look something like the driver’s side door panel.
If nobody knows your cars, and they kinda look like lots of other cars, you’d better put the model name in big letters in the side so people know what it is, right? That seems to be the thinking here, though Geo did the same thing with the Metro during this period. It’s not a bad looking little car, really, and it looks like it’s in decent condition except for the faded bumpers and some bubbling window tint.
2002 Ford Escort ZX2 – $1,500
Engine/drivetrain: 2.0-liter DOHC inline 4, four-speed automatic, FWD
Location: Loveland, CO
Odometer reading: 182,000 miles
Operational status: Runs and drives well
Say “Ford Escort” to most people, and they’ll picture the little hatchback or wagon that their aunt drove, a competent way to get around, but hardly a performance car. But a sportier version of the Escort has always been lurking in the options list, on both sides of the Atlantic, if you knew what to ask for. We never got the old rear-wheel-drive Escorts that were the stuff of rally legends, but we did get two ever-improving generations of Escort GT, the cool two-seat EXP, and this little number: the ZX2.
Ford made a big deal out of calling the Escort a “World Car,” but I think that term applies to the ZX2 most of all. It’s based on the Mazda BG platform designed in Japan, it’s powered by a 2.0 liter Zetec inline four designed in Europe, and it was built in Mexico. This thing is from everywhere. The Zetec is a good amount of power for this little car, but unfortunately, this one is shackled to a four-speed automatic transmission. Hey, it’s fifteen hundred bucks; you can’t complain too much. It runs and drives fine, the seller says, and has a new battery, belts, hoses, and valve cover gasket.
Inside, it’s “Ford Interior Gray,” a color you know if you ever owned a Ford product from the 1990s or 2000s. My ’93 Escort was this color inside, as was the ’96 Explorer my wife drove for years. It’s boring, but inoffensive, and it holds up pretty well. This one has a rip in the seat bolster, and it could use a cleaning, but it’s basically intact.
I have to give Ford a lot of credit for its exterior color choices during this time, however. You could get the typical 90s teal and yellow, but there were also several good shades of blue available, as well as fuchsia, purple, and this excellent emerald green. This one has some battle scars, but it isn’t rusty, and it still looks pretty good. I do wish Ford had left that dumb rear spoiler off, though.
The great thing about cars in this price range is that if something happens to them, you can just scrap them and walk away, and you’re not out much. The bad thing about them is if you’re going on a first date, you might want to pick something a bit nicer. But they should both be reliable, more or less, and they’ll both get pretty good gas mileage. Which one seems like a better deal to you?
I have to vote ‘Neither’. It will be a nightmare to have to find parts for a Daihatsu Charade. And a 182K Ford Escort? I don’t need that kind of trouble in my life.
Charade! It’s a Charade! Plus it’s not a Fix Or Repair Daily. I like that it’s stick, has a cool stereo, and those cool letters…Daihatsu was a pretty decent brand. I’d try to hit 105 MPH
Daihatsu for me for the lower mileage, higher novelty factor and the manual transmission.
It’s odd how such random shit boxes like this Charade survived so long. I assumed old person who barely drove it died, then it went into a good storage place, maybe out of sentimentality, but that arm rest looks like it was attacked by a coyote and the aftermarket stereo argues against that. Maybe a grand kid briefly brought it back to life only to find issues pop up from storage and being an old Daihatsu that they didn’t want to deal with. Escort is a nice color and I worked with a guy who used to buy these new in cash and run them for 300k+ miles before getting another, so it shouldn’t be too bad. Of course, that was almost all highway miles put on quickly and that year was around the time he switched to Cavaliers (he could get them cheaper), but for $1500, if you can run it a year or two as a beater with little other investment, that’s a deal. Might even be able to make a few dollars selling to some kid who’s nostalgic for a time they don’t remember.
Is the Daihatsu’s odometer broken? If someone told me one of these cars had 70k miles and other had 182k, I would think the ZX2 was the lower mileage vehicle.
The Daihatsu is interesting. It isn’t a particularly good vehicle, but it is the good kind of weird. I might be interested in a Charade for $2,000 if it were in good condition. This one is too far gone to justify anywhere near that price, though.
As for the ZX2, I have zero enthusiasm for it as a vehicle. It isn’t interesting or weird-good. It is an transportation appliance. It just kind of exists. However, a car that exists in running and driving form for $1500 in 2025 is a good deal. It is the clear winner here, unfortunately.
If you believe that odometer hasn’t been manually adjusted to that value(and probably doesn’t advance anymore) I have a charade to sell you…
Like, it says it right in the name.
Really, the ZX2 should’ve been called EXP, but I guess Ford figured EXP didn’t have much in the way of brand equity. Interestingly enough, though EXP was a meaningless jumble of three letters, ZX2 had meaning: Zetec engine, Generation X, 2-door. Dumb, yes, but at least an attempt was made.
Can’t resist the siren call of the emerald green. It’s a shame that green is such a rare car color these days.
Ford kind of revived it with Maverick and Bronco Sport. Not 100% the same shade but a nice effort, nonetheless
The Charade has its charms but I’m going a decade newer with the possibility of actually finding parts and someone to work on it when something goes wrong. Although to be honest I don’t think I’d be paying someone else to work on a car in this price range, it would be a live with it, do whatever I can to patch it, or just scrap it.
Friend in college bought a ZX2 5 speed new. Seemed a perfectly cromulent car.
The Charade looks good on the outside but god is it scuzzy inside – hence the charade.
I picked the Charade for the mileage on the odometer pic. Nice.
I picked the ZX2. Good little cars; stout, easy-to-work-on drivetrain, drove nicely, sold quickly when I put it up for sale (mine was a flip car that I dragged home and fixed, covering a couple months of mortgage payments during the Great Recession).
I road raced a 98′ ZX2 for many hundreds of laps. Great car, engine was dead reliable, thrash it all day never used an once of oil. Flashed the ECU to move redline from 6500 to 8000 on a stock bottom end and it took it no problem. The manual 5 speed tranny didn’t like the 7500 RPM shift points
Consider me Escorted.
The Daihatsu would be a little fun, and driving the ZX2 would be a chore, which means that the fact that the Escort could last longer isn’t a benefit.
Me in my Daihatsu… rolling down the avenue.
It was just a charade, I never loved that escort. Daihatsu me.
The Escort is 100% the sensible choice, but I want the Charade. It’s weird and sort of cool somehow.
For less than 2001$ I’ll take the manual and beat the snot out of it until it dies. I know I’m in the minority again today.
Don’t care about the automatic, the ZX2 all day. You’ve got a prayer when it comes to parts, and that was a pretty stout powertrain.
The Charade is the better car. Daihatsu failed in the US because their prices were too high. While their cars are high quality, so were other Japanese brands that were more established.
Fun fact: the Rocky wasn’t available with an automatic in the US, where automatic is the most popular, but the option was available in other markets LOL
Ford quality suxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Even though they only killed off their cars recently, they never cared about them in the first place. Detroit always saw small cars as an afterthought rather than a core part of the lineup like others do.
The Rocky is desirable, a Charade never was nor ever will. Daihatsu quality sucks today. Toyota recalled hundreds of thousands of vehicles a couple years ago due to safety issues.
Ford quality sucks today, but the early aughts were ok. The Zetec/4 spd combo was not exciting but would go the distance. The Charade was neither
I like the motor, color, and form of the Ford. But, at this point in my automotive history, a car needs to be at least a bit special for me to vote for a 4-cylinder automatic—even one from this century.
Besides, cheap, under-powered shitbox is where I started, and I still have some nostalgia glossing over how truly crappy most of mine were. I’ll play Charades.
Call me crazy, but the Charade is a manual that’s ready to be blown up at a rallycross. And the seats and steering wheel would be really comfy while doing it.
Ok: you’re crazy
But I’m crazy too: sounds like great fun!
it looks more like a 24hr of Lemons kind of vehicle to me. Although overpriced
“and the mayor of my hometown owned a Pontiac dealership”
So his son drove a bitchin’ TA instead of a Camaro.
The ZX2 looks like it has 180,000 miles of wear.
So does the Charade, despite having just over 1/3 the mileage of the Ford.
There would be some entertainment (read: suffering) had to see how long one could drive the Interstate with the tiny 1.0L screaming until it blew up, but aside that, and the challenge of finding bespoke parts for a ’90s car sold in small numbers from a defunct brand here, not really seeing $2,000 of value here.
Save the $500, put it to the repair budget for the Ford that you can actually find parts for.
That’s a great point. That interior is super trashed for the miles and I forgot to factor that into my decision. The ZX2 is definitely the right call here, but I already voted for the Charade and have no ragrets
I’ve been in the minority all week this week, Charade for me. If the ZX2 were lower miles or manual I would go for it, but the auto and high miles make the Charade the better option in my head, plus it gets extra points for the weird factor.