we aren’t given crystal balls to see if we have a money pit situation when these things come up. They have a suspension diagnosis charge and an oil leak charge recommendation; you don’t know the full cost of repairs needed yet according to these not being done along with the brakes also being in an unknown condition.

Another issue is not knowing its service history unless you can find service records or if dealer maintained go to the dealer and talk to the service dept to see what has been done. If the car hasn’t been maintained well over the years then you may be putting good money behind bad at this point.

Is a car payment really that bad? I can’t say without knowing how much the worst case scenario of needed repairs are vs taking the whole of that money that would have gone to repairs and doing a down payment with trade in of this car instead.

I would hate that you do all this and end up in a year or so with a huge failure that requires you to go further down the pit. You said it has rust, rust belt rust or typical light rust? Another thing to get full understanding on before dropping money on the car.