You never know if it’s going to be reliable until you buy it. You should never ASSUME a sub 4-5k car is going to be reliable enough to drive to California and back, that’s just poor common sense. It could do it, it could not…but I PERSONALLY wouldn’t take the gamble by assuming that 2k was all I was going to have to pay on it. It’s good sense to allot a little more IN CASE.
And I did the Cali to New York drive in 4 days. 11 hours, 11 hours, 11 hours, 8 1/2 hours… and that was in a 93 Geo tracker that was leaking oil so bad I had to put another quart in almost every hour the last day.