9 Best Cars You Can Buy For Under $5,000

here are nine amazing cars that you can get for under five grand you're watching throttle house I'm Thomas and I'm James and today we're looking at some pretty great cars that you can get for under five thousand dollars u.s. or in maple syrup land about seven thousand dollars in what is great right because like I don't even know I've been locked down for so long that I don't remember what colors taste like okay so for this we wanted to find the most car for the money and we did not limit it to the most reliable or the fastest we wanted to find cars that had a specific focus on an X Factor something that makes them cool and we've scoured the genres and compiled what we think is a very fun list and it's by no means a buying guide and as always this is not the only list in fact we purposely tried to stay away from the more obvious ones let's do this car reviews and quite a lot of messages out to subscribe hit the bell number nine the Mazda rx-8 we're going rotary hip honestly I didn't realize these were this cheap unique styling suicide doors in a rotary engine yeah for those of you that are familiar with the rx-8 being a rotary engine but aren't quite sure what that means kind of like when you hear that an old Porsche is air-cooled Wow cool yeah it is a very cool engine instead of traditional Pistons it has a single rotor that turns around a casing to compress the air & fuel mixture and basically since it's so simple it runs incredibly smoothly revs very high and actually has a really great sound and it ultimately failed because they're horrible on fuel burn a ton of oil are terrible for emissions and you have to be careful how you start stop and drive them but assuming you pay attention to what you're buying and how you own it the rx-8 is a great sounding great looking really good handling car for under $5,000 number eight the toyota mr2 okay this car has a unique characteristic that no other car on this list has yeah whichever generation you go for you can get yourself a sporty little Toyota that mid-engined just like a mini supercar the engine is behind you and in front of the rear axle and actually that's what mr2 stands for mid-engined rear-wheel-drive two-seater you can get a third gen car for about five grand but for us the sweet spot is the second generation mr2 like this one little car need only little engine which is good because only came with a 130 horsepower 2.2 liter 4-cylinder but if you wanted to you could option it with the power package which massively extended the power to the windows and door locks the power package gives you power windows power door but with mild power comes great crash ability yeah these are known for doing a lovely little thing called snap oversteer basically it means that because the engines behind you and the chassis isn't that sophisticated if you lift off the throttle mid-corner well you're swapping yeah it's a it's a bit of a thing and it's not super easy to control but the upside is over the time that you have your mr2 you'll you'll get really good at driving because you'll have to or this will happen number seven the Infiniti g37 we didn't plan that up until recently you could only get a third gen g35 for about this price but now you can get a fourth gen g37 and while a good car right at the outset it does need to be said that Infiniti as a brand I don't think needs to exist Nissan is a cool enough brand as it is and recently anyway Infiniti has completely lost the plot yeah they look fantastic but they prioritized comfort over driver connection the steering wheel isn't even physically connected to the wheels right but go back in time to the g37 era and thankfully it is and even though you can get a 370 SN from this area those are still quite expensive but the g37 it's bigger more sophisticated brother is cheap in both coupe and sedan form and really you can only just find them for under five grand and it's an incredibly competent sports car you might have to settle for a not so stellar automatic transmission at this price we only actually found one manual in our range but either way you get a late-2000s so not that old 3.7 liter v6 that makes a very healthy 328 horsepower and it has a proper rear wheel drive chassis you're basically getting three seventies head levels of power and engineering but for a much cheaper price and it's more practical but spend a little bit more than 5k if you can number six the Pontiac Firebird so those other cars don't float your boat you don't want an Infiniti and you don't want a toyota with a pithy 4-cylinder what if for under five grand or there abouts you could get a monstrous eight American muscle car under the hood of one of these Firebirds you get the lt1 v8 that was in the c4 Corvette actually my first car was a Pontiac Bonneville SSCI it was a hand-me-down and it actually shares a steering wheel with this car hashtag memories and both of those cars are sadly from a manufacturer that no longer exists which is why it's cheap 305 horsepower and available in manual although the time of searching for this famer we could only find it in automatic it is a no-holds-barred rubber burning drag race monster if you want it to be or thanks to the back seats which the Corvette don't go on have that right okay it's fun for the whole family and this one is the GT package which changes so many things it makes the 235 width tires 245 Wow and it makes the speedometer go from instead of 150 miles an hour all the way up to 155 miles an hour and it actually raises the top speed but that's it and yeah the looks all very 90s America but on to number five number five the BMW 3-series II 46 generation okay I'm gonna let Thomas take this one this is my Eve 46 BMW I've actually owned three of these in fact I started this YouTube channel by tuning and modifying e46 BMWs and the reason for that is that for well under five grand you can get yourself a rear-wheel drive manual transmission inline six perfectly balanced BMW that's incredibly versatile I've de lead them I've tracked them and currently I'm converting this exact car into an endurance racing car and I bought it for $2,000 yeah but how much money have you spent repairing not important and is that even the original engine that came the point is that even though there is a crap ton of maintenance to do on these and they very often break they're really really cheap parts are plentiful and there's a million to choose from just buy some wrenches watch some YouTube videos learn to work on your car yourself and for really cheap you can have yourself a fantastic little sports car and you don't even need to buy the m3 a 325 I will do just fine even though I swapped a 330 motor into this one number for the Saab 9 2 X arrow this is one of the coolest cars on this list yeah because like me up until recently you might not even know that it exists if you're wondering why it kind of looks and sounds like a Subaru WRX with a Saab badge on the front that's only because it is a Subaru WRX with a Saab badge on the front basically in the early 2000s General Motors owned Saab and they also had a null stake in Subaru so when Saab wanted a little all-wheel drive hatchback they grabbed the WRX dressed up in Saab badges and then sold it here in North America but thankfully it wasn't just as simple as new badges they actually redesigned the entire front end and gutted the interior and put nicer materials in there and extra sound deadening and the coolest part is that they use the steering rack from the STI so at a very quick steering ratio and they tuned the suspension yeah if you can find the Aero trim like this one it still has the same WRX 2-liter turbo flat for making 227 horsepower but it's overall just a more comfortable better performing WRX and coming from a guy that owns a WRX from that era I can tell you firsthand it could do with a little bit just a little bit more refinement okay a lot a lot more refinement and if you're lucky really lucky you can find one of these for cheap but expect all the typical Subaru problems from the era and good luck finding the saab specific parts for this car number three the Ford Crown Victoria X police interceptor crown because amongst sub $5,000 used cars this one is black and blue royalty black and white blue and white the fuzz blue fuss what's the what's the police phrase James I believe you call them roses bobbies coppers I know you like to think it is Thomas but my life isn't just episodes of peaky blinders okay the Crown Vic legend v8 rear wheel drive body-on-frame it's essentially a tank in carful yep you can modify them you can drift them and they do burnouts [Applause] they're cheap they last forever people slow down when they see you and if you're not careful while driving on a California Canyon and you're filming a stupid YouTube car of you with a movie car dressed police Crown Victoria and the thing that's covering the police lights falls off which definitely didn't happen and even the cops think that you're a cop and they silly you as you drive past only to realize that when you have driven past that you're not a cop and they walk over to their car and then they get to chase you this way which which didn't happen to us though definitely not and as long as you don't follow the same back alley YouTube tutorial that James must have watched you can hood slide them number to the Porsche 944 yeah you would a $5,000 washer and a lot of Porsches from this time when up in value but some of them have become a value the latter describes the 944 it not only does it have a beautiful design it's actually a beautiful car to drive and that's because it has a transaxle that means that the 143 horsepower 4-cylinder engine is at the front but the transmission is at the back that gives it a perfect weight distribution which means the handling is fantastic and since it's a Porsche from the 80s it's very engaging to drive and to be honest $5,000 does not buy you the cleanest exile tools in but they're still available for that price just just be ready to put some time and some money into one or just buy a more expensive one at the outset just like the e46 but if you do get one and you take care of it you have a really timeless fantastic handling car and any other Porsche from this era is like 30 grand you could also look for a 9 to 4 from this era as well but properly clean examples at the 5k lock pop-up very rarely so number one the Volkswagen Phaeton this is one of the most amazing Volkswagens ever made and you might not have even heard of it it originally sold with a six-figure price tag but since then the prices have absolutely plummeted obviously you'd have to be completely foolish to even consider buying one unrelated with a special appearance for our final car here's Todd from everyday driver who is a proud owner of one of these I bought this car because I was always fascinated by them in the early 2000s a CEO of Volkswagen said we're gonna make the world's greatest luxury sedan and sell it as a Volkswagen which is like the people trying to sell you a high-definition film camera those words don't really go together but let's give that a shot this is a 2000 for the first year they sold it in the US they only sold it until 2006 because it was a sales disaster when people come into Volkswagen looking for a Jetta they're not gonna spend upwards of $80,000 the great news I got this for $5,000 yes it's got some problems but $5,000 I had to give it a shot so it was a very expensive car and that's because it had some crazy tech I'm not sure you need it but it does have a draught less HVAC system if nothing else it's theatrical it has fully adjustable air suspension with even a sport mode it also has different ride heights it will have smart cruise control if you spec it right 18 way adjustable seats with massage in the upper levels of the Phaeton you could spend one hundred and twenty thousand dollars and wind up with a four seater with executive class back seats heat massage the entire thing back here in the back but even here in the base model I've got pretty much more legroom than anything any modern car has provided I know I said you'd be foolish to buy one but I'm sure there's has been fine reliable everything Oh has it been expensive to keep running oh okay but it still has value and there's a lot of car one of my favorite things about this car is anyone I let drive it or riding it the minute we're up to freeway speed looks at me and says how much did you pay for this they cannot believe what a great highway roadtrip car this is especially at five thousand dollars imagine if I'd bought a good one so there you go a ton of car for the money thank you very much Todd for setting us over that clip you want to see more of his adventure with the Volkswagen Phaeton and Paul's adventure with an equally ill-advised Maserati Quattroporte head over to the everyday driver YouTube channel alright there's nine funky cars that you can get for under five thousand US dollars don't do it do it let us know what other topics and themes you want us to cover for our throttle stay in the house series we actually need this it's keeping us sane during times of isolation these are not the droids you're looking for oh okay well Thomas seems to have lost his mind thanks to all the time he's had on his own one liked eek was one prayer for Thomas thanks for watching you

Channel: Throttle House

Views: 1,260,519

Rating: 4.8751693 out of 5

Keywords: cheap cars, cars under 5k, cars under 5, cheap first car, first cars, cheap performance cars, mazda rx-8, mazda, mr-2, toyota, infiniti, infiniti g37, nissan, pontiac, firebird, e46 bmw, bmw 330i, saab 92x-aero, crown victoria, ford crown vic, subaru wrx, porsche 944, porsche, cheap porsche, volkswagen, phaeton, volkswagen phaeton, toyota mr-2, cheap toyota, budget cars, budget toyota, reliable toyota, reliable mazda, cheap bmw, cars students can afford, cool cheap cars

Id: QTwduYuXCJU

Length: 16min 24sec (984 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 29 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Sozin91]

List

1. Mazda RX-8

2. Toyota MR2

3. Infinity G37

4. Pontiac Firebird

5. BMW 3 series E46

6. SAAB 92-X Aero

7. Ford Crown Victoria / Police Interceptor

8. Porsche 944

9. Volkswagen Phaeton

[u/A_1337_Canadian]

Is it me or does Canada have a shit used car market compared to the US (which are both shit compared to Europe)?

I find that it is hard to find cool, cheap used cars here. I imagine this is attributed to the harsher environmental conditions (heat, cold, salt).

[u/zao_zeeeee]

Lol no offense, I would not buy an rx8, that’s a lot of maintenance money

[u/madevilfish]

Why buy a clapped out 944 when you could buy a clapped out 928. I have no horse in this race at all lol.

[u/cholula_is_good]

The G37 is likely the best deal in the entirety of the used market right now.

[u/Fugner]

Ayy, 9-2X Aero boys represent.

[u/RamblingMutt]

I feel like they were trying their absolute hardest to not recommend a front wheel drive car. I know they were going for the more unusual picks in general, except the g37, e46, and Crown are staples of sub 5k cars, it feels odd that they wouldn't at least mention an Si or XRS which can be had for that price any day of the week. Hell, Mk4 Golf GTi, and that will walk an RX8 for the same price.

[u/THEREALCABEZAGRANDE]

Some others to consider:

Jaguar XJR. I like the X308 (1998-2003), but the X300 (1990-1996) and X350 (2004-2008) are great too. My 2000 has been a gem. 370 hp and 390 torque stock. Bombproof Mercedes 722 transmission. Excellent handling. Massive brakes. Wonderful interior. It gets compliments everywhere i go because it may be the best looking sedan ever made. And you can find them everywhere for under $5k. You will have to work on them, but they're really pretty reliable and cheap to work on. If you can do your own maintenance, they're spectacular values.

First gen TSX: These are great cars. K24, six speed manual, great handling, very nice interior. A very fun vehicle thats extremely practical to boot. These are spectacular first cars. Fast enough to be entertaining but not to get you in trouble. Super reliable but very cheap and easy to work on when they break. Insurance costs nothing. Great mileage. Nice, roomy interior.

[u/St1ck33]

Shout out Saab 92-x Aero!