We should have the more Mustachian response: Best Cars for $750 or Less! Or maybe $7,500 for the very spendy.
Or Best Bikes for $75 or Less!
Best car I've dealt with for $750 or less was definitely my old 1992 Buick Roadmaster Wagon. We bought that sucker for $700 in 2014, and drove the hell out of it for just over two years.
158,309 to 200,775. 42,441 miles driven.
Note: it did have the common courtesy to die with only a quarter tank of gas left.
Nights of pizza delivery: 2-3 (let a friend borrow it for a few nights when a teenager totaled his car)
Pizzas delivered: unknown
Square feet of sod transported: 600
Couches transported: 3
Mattresses transported: 4
Box springs transported: 4
Freezers transported: 2
Deer hit: 1
Properly-blinking-without-help turn signals since deer impact: 1
Decks of cards left in glove box: 1
Chipotle napkins left in glove box: 17
Keys broken off in ignition: 1
Over-the-top enthusiastic thumbs-up from other drivers on the highway: 2
Exhaust pieces dropped: 1
Most passengers carried (including driver): 7
Hood ornaments mangled by misguided clearing of snow: 1
Maximum number of fire extinguishers on board: 3
Minimum number of usable mirrors: 1
Mirror-related fixes and "fixes": 3
Maximum number of fully-grown dogs at once: 6
Maximum average speed over a 24-hour period: 54mph
Speeding tickets on the Ohio Turnpike: 1
Holes in driver's seat: 2
Gallons of gasoline spilled on I-94: 18
Times exterior washed in 2016: 0
Comparisons to the Wagon Queen Family Truckster (including being addressed as Chevy Chase): approx. 4
Most idiot lights on at once: 4
Times it left the driver stranded in any capacity: 3
Times it left the driver stranded more than 100 miles from home: 2
Times it left the driver stranded more than 100 miles from home and it was the car's fault: 1 (when it died completely at 200,775)
Wiper blade replacements: 0
Batteries replaced: 0
Cassette tapes played: 0
Tires replaced: 0
Coolers left behind because they couldn't be strapped to the roof: 0
Most raw frozen dog food hauled back from Wisconsin at once: 600lbs
Fuel ups: 178
Times trailer hitch used: 1
Times trailer hitch used for intended purposes: 0
Maximum disparity between value of cargo and value of vehicle: approx. $4,000
MSRP in 1992: $23,040 ($39,518 in 2016 dollars)
3.4 cents/mi Maintenance and Repairs
13.9 cents/mi Fuel (18MPG "lifetime" average)
2.4 cents/mi Insurance
1 cent/mi Plates, renewals, etc.
1.4 cents/mi Depreciation (scrap value of $100)
Total: 22.3 cents per mile
It was a solid car. I would recommend it to a friend. Crappy gas mileage but loads of cargo capacity and dead reliable. Only snags were hitting a deer (which went shockingly well), something on the road blowing a three-inch hole in the gas tank 250 miles from home (no big deal), a serpentine belt pulley bracket snapping for no reason (that was a fun one), a crappy Home Depot key breaking off in the ignition (was able to fish it out much easier than anticipated), and scraping the bottom going up my driveway when weighed down with 600 square feet of sod (probably damage but of no obvious consequence; looking back, this was extremely dumb - I don't even want to know how much that all weighed and how much I was overloading the suspension).