Yup, maintenance isn't bad if you can do things yourself.
2000 Echo, minus ONLY fuel and insurance, cost me around $1000 to drive for 5 years. True, I got 30 quarts of Pennzoil Platinum at 80 cents per quart which helped, but really it was just a cat, a few used tires, clean the mass air sensor, replace a fender and headlight assembly, and had to replace the VVTi actuator. Car was free* and if I'm being honest, I probably could have fixed the coolant thing for under $100, but I wanted to move on so I wrote it off. Served me for 5 years and ~70k miles, it left me with ~263k hard miles on it.
I overpaid for my Civic, which I'm ok with. It's clean and looks like it'll get better FE. Only major expense should be timing belt should I elect to have it done for me. Leaky clutch master cylinder is cheap to replace. Other things such as shifter bushings are optional. Probably will follow the "remove + improve" plan, upgrading things as they need to be replaced.
I'd rather save the $$$ now and eat the money on something nice in the future.
* Was wife's car when I got with her. Her family purchased it brand new. So "free" might include wedding costs and marriage baggage
in which case it's a rather expensive car for something with mold on the carpets and not a single undamaged body panel.
I can't see paying big money for a modern car (says the guy who bought a used minivan). For myself it's either cheap cars like my Civic, or go with my passion, classic cars, which are both cheap to keep up and basically immune to depreciation.