In my experience it is incredibly common for people without much money to have cars that seem impractical, because they are easy to buy but hard to maintain. I think this is pretty common with cars that were very popular when they were first released (the 300 was) so the market is saturated with old ones in rough condition that are cheap to purchase but terrible to maintain.

Sample size of 1, but my roommate in college (I was in college, he was not) went through 3 cars in the amount of time I had just 1 because he only ever had enough money to buy a crappy car and had terrible credit. They all broke down pretty quickly so he ended up spending more in the long-run, but in the end he had to get to work, so he did what he had to do.