That's how I get a lot of my vehicles. A guy at work had a 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee. None of the windows worked, the fan blower didn't work, it had a noise in the rear end and so on. On the other hand, it ran good, the 4X4 worked, the paint looked new and beyond the previous mentioned problems just needed a good cleaning. I replaced the blower relay (it had fused) all four window regulators, replaced the foggy headlights and put a bull bar on the front. I paid $2000 for it, spent about $600 on parts plus my time and drove it for several months. KBB for it was $4000, $4200 if one was optimistic on condition. I had a fellow want to trade my a 1997 Ford F-250 Powerstroke diesel pickup. KBB on that was $7500 at the time. It seemed too good to be true but I couldn't think of a reason to NOT trade as I had more use for a pickup.
A kid had owned it before him and was going to stack it. The exhaust was cut off behind the cab and the headlights were blacked out. (I also rolled coal once but that's another story) I replaced the headlights and tail lights with newer style ones, put two new tires on it, replaced the muffler (that turbo whine was driving me up the wall) and have been driving it for one year. The only major issue was it died once and sat for three weeks before I hauled it to an auto electric shop here locally. It took them three hours to track the problem down and three minutes to fix it. There is a slot in the computer on the engine to accept a performance chip. One was put in and it failed. While it was in there, the computer wouldn't talk to the diesel drivers and no drivers means no injectors. They unplugged the chip and the truck hasb't missed a beat since.
I've owned about 200 cars that I have driven in my life and it's mostly get an old car, fix it up and drive it a bunch, sell it and get something else that catches my eye. This doesn't include parts cars. My lowest mileage car is just under 200K and one has nearly 300K on it.