A bunch of those cars and trucks may last a long time, but they get horrible gas mileage.
Yeah the Taurus might be ok if you have a fairly constant-speed highway commute or something, but other than the Corolla, they are all horrible on gas mileage and maintenance costs when things do go wrong. I currently have a pretty crappy used car (1997 Escort Wagon, no heat, no A/C, very worn shocks, runs rough at low RPM in spite of $900 in repairs since purchasing it) so I bookmarked a search on Craigslist for 2004 and later $1500-4000 cars.
I'd say the best candidates are generally things like the Ford Focus (often in undesirable to the world, desirable to us) wagon form, various compact and subcompact Kias and Hyundais, Mazda 3's, Nissan Sentras and Versas (especially the hatchback version), Pontiac Vibe & Toyota Matrix (Pontiac version always cheaper), and if you're willing to take a little chance, Suzukis are always dirt cheap here, probably for the same reason Pontiacs are cheap: the brand is not officially sold here anymore.
I basically
never see anything from Honda or Toyota in good condition for under $4000 in my area. The southwest and on in to California is an area where those brands are considered the best cars money can buy, so you see stupid stuff like 10 year old Civics with 285,000 miles and a salvage title still selling for $5000. IMHO, a 90,000 mile Kia Spectra for $3200 looks a lot more attractive.
On the topic of gas mileage, I decided to look at it from a mustachean standpoint. I myself have put about 2500 miles on my Escort in the 6 months I've owned it, so to me, I am willing to call 5000 miles a year a good working mustachean midpoint. Most of those tanks in the Jalopnik article will probably deliver 15mpg in mixed driving. A compact or subcompact should easily be 24mpg, even if we're talking about some of those older Kias with an automatic. I say that as a two-time Elantra owner with automatic transmissions. I'll call gas $3.50/gallon.
Old tank: $1166/year
Compact: $729/year
Another factor is that for things like cleaning fuel injectors, replacing spark plugs, coilpacks, or anything else, you simply have more of them on a 6 of 8 cylinder car than you do on a 4 cylinder car. I'd be willing to say that you'll probably spend an extra $150/year in maintenance, even if nothing breaks.
By my math, it's going to cost you at least $600/year more to have an old tank than a compact, even if that compact doesn't get spectacular mileage to begin with. The gap widens even more if you drive more miles or are looking at more efficient compacts, like in the 30mpg range. So over 5 years, the old tank will cost you an extra $3000 more. Since the point of the article was cars under $5000, suddenly it means your budget for a tank would be $5000, but really that tank would cost you more like $8000 versus a $5000 compact.