We drive beaters quite a bit, and we've had real good luck with 3 different Chevy Lumina's. Daughter's driving one now with close to 200 K on it and it's been very dependable. We got 225K plus out of the other two before they were done. No transmission issues, the motors held up well, both of them just got to the point where we decided it wasn't worth it to put any money in them.
