I am sad both by the choices and cost.
I know cash for clunkers killed a lot of cheap used cars.
So up till then you could get a running driving junker for around 500 bucks.
I don't think a single car I ever owned before I got a "real" job cost me over 1k and I drove all but one multiple years.
Which forced me to learn how to fix the cars. Which I think kids will miss out on.

The choices are terrible, but that just goes with what was around in 2000.
Heck even m-bodies seem to have gotten expensive for some reason.
I don't really see but a handful of cars under 2k advertised anywhere, that would even be considered usable in the condition I see them in.

I still have a few years before I need to find a clunker like that, but it is disappointing how far the world has gone down hill.

I might be remembering poorly, and glamorizing the pain, but some of my most vivid memories were fixing those cars back in the day like during a road trip, or over a weekend so I could get to work on monday.