Heh! My dad had the solution to that back in 1962. He bought a "sort of running" Nash Metropolitan for $300. He gave me that and a basic set of Craftsman tools and said "when you have repaired it to my satisfaction, you can drive it (the Old Man was a TOP mechanic... if it was mechanical, he could fix it)".
Greatest compliment I ever had from him..."I never thought you'd be such a good mechanic." (my interests 'til then had been VERY "bookish").
And I still have most of those tools.