What Car Should I Buy?

I bought a car off ebay once. I was drunk, it was red. It had no MoT and had done a quarter of a million miles. It cost me £74 and the bloke delivered it from Luton. I drove it to the MoT place, it had huge rusty holes in all the suspension turrets. I scrapped it.

Oof. Helpfully I made a resolution a long time ago to stop going near the internet whilst pissed so will hopefully be safe from this particular kind of scenario. Did you actually remember buying it, or did the guy just turn up with it? The latter would make it all even worse :-(

Do you actually need a car or just to have a licence for a year?
Don't buy one you don't need, it'll just be a money pit. Cars need to be driven often or things seize up.
If you do need one, the cheapest to insure or run is a Daewoo Matiz. Buy cheap and you may be able to sell it for as much as you paid in a year's time.

I don't need a car per se and nor do I really want one - I've got a bike and I live in London so owning a vehicle isn't very high on my list of needs. But I'm of the mind that leaving a gap of 12 months between passing and beginning to drive wouldn't be enormously clever from a road safety point of view, so it's really more about getting regular practice than it is getting around town.

Am looking at second hand Matiz listings now - the cars listed are mostly circa 10 years old and have various mechanical problems. Is that just an age thing, or are they prone to falling apart?