If the junkyard is stunned that you were willing to spend your morning in the mud to get this car running so you could drive it home, and you were stunned that they wanted so little for it, it might be a beater.
Or if you buy it for $500 or less. Ideally, a lot less.
Or if you tell a friend that you want their car when they sell it, they call you, and say, "Junk yard offered $125. Beat it and it's yours." And roll up with $150 cash for a Daihatsu Charade.
I drove a lot of what I'd call "beaters" in college because I couldn't afford any better. I learned to work on them myself, because if a real mechanic looked at it, the diagnostic fee alone would total the car. Not that I could afford that anyway.
My cheap cars, ordered by price, and... if I'm honest, plus or minus a year or three on date now, it's been a while.
$100: 1988 Subaru DL Wagon, drove it 30 miles home with enough of an oil leak that I'm surprised the engine held any oil or pressure. Ran great, great FWD snow car.
$150: 1992 Daihatsu Charade. Don't buy weird cars as a beater, getting parts is a nightmare.
$200: 1988 Chevy Cavalier, "Redneck Ricer" by the time I was done with it. Only four door two seater I've owned.
$350: 1987 Subaru GL Wagon, of the "I can't believe the junkyard let me have it for this" fame. To be fair, I spent my morning in the mud replacing the fuel pump on it with the one from my '88 DL, which had just broken a timing belt (non-interference engine), and I had to beg for a working power booster jump start pack (they gave me a bad one, which didn't work, and eventually the other guy at the junkyard had pity on me and offered me their working one, which actually did start the car).
And then into non-beaters, from $2000 and up. I put an awful lot of miles on those cheap cars, though, and sold every one for more than I paid (though, if you count parts costs, probably a wash - except for all the miles I drove).
I wasn't bad with money, I just didn't have much. Post-college, or "I've quit a poorly paying job to go back to grad school and have no income beyond a bit of a side gig writing website backends." When most of it goes to rent, you bike to Aldis to buy the bulk packs of ramen with pocket change, and you'd still like a car to get around in the winter... you pick what you can afford.
I won't claim perfect reliability on these. But I can say, entirely honestly, that none of these ever left me stranded (which is better than I can say for my $2000 cars - one of those required a tow truck because the front suspension came apart, and one blew an engine and a coolant line and a few other issues - RX-7, so... garage queen). The cheap cars certainly required work, and I usually figured on spending $500 on anything I purchased within the first 6 months, but they got me home every time (even the 88 DL had the good sense to break a timing belt as I turned into my parking lot).
Am I missing something here? When I hear "beater", I take it to mean a vehicle that is worn out and dilapidated but still drives/functions with relative reliability-- e.g., the windows don't roll down, the heater doesn't work, the seats/covers are ripped, engine smokes/burns/drips oil, there is OBVIOUS rust and/or obviously replaced body/door panels, etc.
It's relative, but, yeah. I don't expect much to work in anything I call a "beater." The windows on mine were usually fine, though hand crank, and I learned quickly that the fewer "features" a car has, the fewer things there are to go wrong. That Daihatsu Charade had manual windows (that mostly closed - track was funky and I never cared to fix it), manual steering (fine once you were moving), a manual transmission, and a barely working AM/FM radio. I think it had a tape deck but I never dared put a tape in it.
Etc. These vehicles cost ~$1,200 or less. Yes, in a year or two, they'll likely need a $500 repair. Which will probably keep them going for another year or two. They'll probably need some driveway tinkering along the way (adjusting carbs, changing spark plugs, etc.)
The general tinkering is just part of a cheap car, and TBH if you can't do that, you have no business owning a cheap car. I learned this very quickly. At the time, anything I purchased got new plugs/wires/distributor, a new O2 sensor, a new fuel filter if I could find the stupid thing (I was
not dropping a fuel tank to mess with fuel filters), and then whatever else it needed as I found problems that were actually important enough to fix.
Am I missing something? Or am I just so poor/broke that I'm just agog at the level of wealth and hedonic adaptation here? In literally no case (okay, maybe 0.01% of cases) will a brand new car ever be more cost effective for transportation than a vehicle like any of the ones I've listed here. And these aren't rare or special-- I just went on my local craigslist and looked at cars "by owner" for <$1500 and <$5000, respectively. And even then, I passed over a bunch of okay-looking cars to pick out "beaters", and a bunch of less-than-cherry cars to pick out "not beaters". What gives?
My guess is that most people on this forum have their finances well enough sorted out that they're not buying "true beaters" because they have the money to afford something a bit nicer, don't have the hands on car skills to maintain a beater (I didn't when I started, but learned quickly because walking in the winter sucked), and, really, once you're post-college and have a bit of income, there's no reason to buy a rolling wreck if you can afford a bit nicer.
Also, Cash4Clunkers ruined the used car market for at least a decade. You can't find that sort of stuff I bought anymore at those prices, because so many cheap cars were taken off the streets that it distorted the market, badly. For a while after that abomination, used cars with 2 years and 25k miles were selling for almost as much as a brand new car - and you could get better financing on a new car. New car for an extra few grand at 0%, or a used car at 8% or something? The used car savings were very, very minimal. </rant>
When I met my wife she had a 20 year old honda with no muffler, cracked windshield, caulked closed sunroof and we had to put power steering fluid in it every 2 weeks. That's a beater. :D
Muffler... um... OH! The cheapest one at the parts store, held on with coat hangers, routed with the flex exhaust tubing! If you're fancy, get a glass pack - makes an old Subaru have a much throatier roar than it ought, and it
might set off the occasional car alarm idling through a parking lot. A 1.8L 4 cylinder with 85hp setting off car alarms made me giggle for weeks thinking about it.
If you're going through that much power steering fluid, the stop leak stuff is worth a shot - saved me an awful lot in power steering fluid (one of my cars literally left a puddle of it if I sat with the engine running for more than a minute or two).
My wife was driving a Taurus with a bad transmission when I met her, and rapidly replaced that with a $500 Ford Festiva that I insist she overpaid for, but I hadn't realized just how badly C4C ruined the used car market.
With a kid around and another on the way, there's no way in hell I'll let her drive anything that ragged around unless we're genuinely out of all other options. Pure and simple. I drove beaters, she drove beaters, but we're further on in life now, and we can afford more reliable vehicles. I do plan to keep the Mazda3 about forever, and I plan to keep my truck about forever, but they're far from beaters.
There's beater, and then there's reliable beater. One is just a piece of shit and always has something wrong.
*shrug* Something wrong isn't a big deal, as long as the core functionality works and/or it gets you home. I never counted random coolant leaks or such against a car, as long as it wasn't a catastrophic failure (those are less fun, and don't get you home).
State inspection?
Some states have them and they're expensive and require scrapping cars when they get too ratty. Some states, if you're willing to drive it, Godspeed. I obviously lived in the second category.
I'd say from the pics you have a combination of beaters and Junk. Beater to me is a car that has wear and tear like faded paint, maybe some tears in the interior, some rust , a lot of miles etc.. but still is worth driving as its reliable and safe all the lights are in tact, good tread etc..doesnt cost you more to drive because its worn.
Nah... that's not a beater. Good tread? A beater usually comes with "tires that more or less hold air." At best. I think all of mine had hit a deer at one point or another. I'll go so far to say that if it
doesn't have a salvage title, it's probably not a beater.
Anyway, my experience and thoughts on the term. I simply don't think many people on this forum are in a situation where a $150 car seems like a good option.