[speeder]

Getting to the root of this post, cars are common pieces of machinery that nearly everyone in the country owns. Many people own more than one. People constantly buy new ones, so at any given time there are thousands, (millions?), for sale.

Regardless of how the market may be at the moment in terms of supply:demand, this guy with his sparkling personality and charm is going out and buying people's worn-out old crap boxes, spray-painting the wheel wells and selling them to people like you who walk on his lot for a couple grand more. This really makes no sense from a buyers standpoint, unless you need a 22% loan on a car for double or triple its value and consider dodging the repo man to be fun and exciting. That's the only scenario where buying from some ghetto used car lot starts to make sense.

As in other things, always skip the middle man where possible. A friend just bought a really decent 2001 Jeep Cherokee off Craigslist for $3500, he will put a few bucks into fixing some leaks and new tires but he is far from a car guy, just needed a dog-mobile to take dogs hiking and a beater so as not to ruin their new cars. He had his choice of several similar ones, all on well known public classified ad sites.

Used car lots like you describe are the equivalent of "rent-to-own" furniture.