I’ll be honest, they are?

There is no affordable car today that you can make any money today that you need to use. They require money in order to maintain it well enough to use.

Tires are expensive. Gas is expensive. You’ve got filters and oils and fluids to replace, and headlamps. Without the required disposables, a car is basically useless.

A house without running water, or power, or natural gas, or a furnace filter, or water softener, or lightbulbs, or toilet paper, etc. still provides shelter without all of those things.

A car gets you from point a to point b until it doesn’t. At that point it’s disposed of.