I just bought a car for around $6k. It's a 2015 with 36,000 miles on it, with 34 city mpg/38 highway.

It's a Smart car, gasoline version. Has 2 seats and the transmission is a little pesky. I need to have the breaks looked at, as they're a bit squeaky. But otherwise it's been driving like a dream. Only downside is it takes premium gas (kinda eats into some of that nice mpg), and some of the parts can be a little more expensive due to weird sizes.

But yea, I agree it was hard to find a good car with a $6k budget. It became very quickly overwhelming to try and research every last one of them, most of which were 10+ years old and had a range of 90k-170k miles or more. And/or much lower MPG.

So, all my searches kept pointing to these dumb little Smart Fortwos. Or a Scion iQ, but the nearest one was like 3 hours away. If you aren't in the market for crazy performance and you're just driving yourself around, these tend to be a good balance of price and "like new" quality. A lot of the original owners just drive them around the city for a couple years before getting bored and selling them, particularly here in the South.

There are some other similar cars in that price range, maybe some with lower long term maintenance cost, but like you said they're harder to find and you have to know how to spot them. My choice is one I'm happy with, but some people hate these little cars (or need a roomier car for multiple purposes). A Honda Civic, a Ford Fiesta, and the Nissan Versa also ended up towards the top of my list for price/miles/age. And, a Prius. It's not a car you'd normally think of as cheap, but apparently you can find a good older one sometimes.

Car buying is hard. I really hope I don't have to do again until I'm way better off and have a higher budget lol