Last time I took a car I didn't trust on an 800 mile round trip it was when I was 18 back in Wyoming in 1996. I had bought a rusty and worn 1980 Caprice sedan with an air pump choked 267 small block for $300 from the local Ford dealer. But I had to get somewhere and it would've been a $180 bus ride or $500 flight and I'd still be riding my bike to school. I picked the $300 car I could keep instead. Chose the Caprice over a 1980 Cutlass with the Buick V6 because the air was ice cold in the Caprice and the Cutlass had no interior door panels and was copper colored with a white hood and blue driver door. At least the Caprice being all faded and scraped up and rusted, was all one shade of metallic blue. It was, however, too bad that chilly AC couldn't cool the radiator. Tank ruptured on the left side (the one with the trans cooler lines) and I toasted that engine but it got me there and back running the heat full blast and topping off the coolant and oil every 50-100 miles. Got it home, drained the oil and coolant, changed the swiss cheese valve cover gaskets, somehow didn't crack the block or either head (but gave it fresh head gaskets and a quickie valve job anyway), threw in a used radiator from a Bonneville, filled up the fluids, and it got me around for a couple months after that. But I nicked one of the condenser lines and the AC didn't work anymore. Oh well. Traded it even for a 1979 LeBaron and then traded that plus $500 for an 1985 Delta 88 to take me back to Texas.