Where do cars with cooked motors go now

That arnt worth or would cost to much to fix, i was looking at a high ks car around the 3000$ mark and found out it has a cam belt on the particular motor, i think the 4cyl ones are chain driven, i would rather by something that needs fixing and do it myself replaceing the cambelt water pump, and head gaskets in one swoop so i dont have to worry about it, these cars now nearly 20 years old are sitting firm at 2500$ 3000$ ish, i missed one for 300$ with a blown headgasket and left it because it was an auto and kicking myself now, they allso have coil packs that can go poot at high ks so i dont want to spend a heap of money, i will save money doing the repairs myself, motor out as those v6 things apparently are a nightmare to do the cambelt in place.

Backyard scrap metal dealers generally, Faceache is crawling with the sods wanting anything and everything it seems. Coil packs aren't a big issue if you know where to buy them, the absolute worst thing you can do is go pay retail for one from the usual Aussie owned outlets.

Those 2-3 k cars are now fetching 4-5 so its worth repowering em.

They are going up in value?, bugger i need some cheap wheels that dont look to silly.

The challenge buying an "end of life car" for a few $$$ is that it is likely to become a total loss when a major repair comes along.
Cheap cars can keep you poor just as easily as some expensive cars can.

Yip. market has tightened a lot for many cheaper used cars.

Sold 2006 1.8L auto corolla hatch with 255,000km about 6 months ago for $3500. I considered the price fair, but it sold the day after listing so may have been on the cheap side. Cheapest 2006 corolla auto 1.8L hatch today is asking $4995.

Few factors in this:
- Global pandemic has made public transport / Taxi / ride hail less attractive. Some people happy with those things prior would have gone out and brought cars.
- Not taking international holidays means quite a few people have extra money in their pockets.
- March 2020 requirement for all imports to have ESC means no more 2006 Corolla's from japan (RunX etc)
- Supply issues with new cars (chip shortage etc), mean many who want to upgrade to new cars can't. (For toyota: Prado & LC200 sold out. Hilux & Rav4: 6 month wait)
- Fairly cheap fuel due to slow down in aviation industry.
- Pandemic slowed supply (and increased price) of used cars out of japan. Used car lots still have visibly less cars on them compared to pre pandemic.
- Pandemic has caused Shipping overload globally (a lot more stuff going sea freight now there aren't as many passenger plane holds to put stuff in). Queues at ports etc all slow stuff down and add cost.

Mate started wrecking yard as add on to his workshop years back as folk would bring in broken cars and realise not worth fixing once quoted. So he would offer couple hundred if it was something he wanted and use parts and sell stuff off. People would be happy to walk way with 200 but yet they’d advertise them for $1000 so likes of me never got to get them and fix them.
Still see ads for cars with faults for silly money and can on,y assume they eventually give I and scrap them. Used to bother looking at some that interested me and make silly offer and got a few I’d fix over time on budget.
Don’t bother anymore and he gave up with wrecking as land leases got too high.