My Pinto has a spending governor on it. $850 to buy, $425 to ship = $1,275. Turbo Coupe parts donor = Free. This, that and the other = $300. Still have about $425 left on the $2,000 limiter setting. I have similar limiters on my other cars. My running '73 Plymouth is in the $1,500 range and the '64 Studebaker Daytona about $1,700 range. My non running Corvair wagon was free as was my Datsun 510 and has about $600 in it. My '63 Rambler American (not now running) was $300 and maybe have $300 more in it. The budget tipper was my '65 Sunbeam Tiger at $5,100 and now is approaching $,6000. I'm in the $10,000 range for all my cars and can't say I'm tempted to sell all but one to make the remaining car pretty.
For me, I prefer volume over extremely nice builds. If I had $100,000 I'd probably have 50/$2,000 cars instead of 4 really nice Pinto's. But again, that it just me.