I'd agree with you on some of those points for sure.

I've been shopping for a sporty work car to keep the miles down on my 4Runner (I've put 25K on it in 10 months). Last weekend I purchased a pretty nice 2006 Pontiac GTO. I was looking for a fairly stock car so I could mod it the way I wanted to and to avoid getting a car someone had hacked up already. Found this car on eBay and it had a good amount of mods done to it, but the price was decent and it was only a few hours from me so I figured I'd go take a look at it. When I get there the exterior is a little rougher then the pics lead me to believe. I start checking out the mods to the car and notice there is a $1200 set of SS headers, a $1500 Exhaust system (fully welded with the tips perfectly aligned), and a $2500 set of premium adjustable set of coilovers on the car. Previous owner spent money on top of the line parts and appeared to install them very well. These were better parts then I would have probably splurged for since this is going to a driver/work car. Now I didn't spend more then the car was worth but have over $5K worth of quality parts on the car made to overlook other imperfections and purchase the car. Had the car been completely stock I would have passed on it for the price. Could this decision bite me in the ass later, YEP but it's all part of the mod game.