This is Planet Money from NPR.

Jacob Roy is a college student studying aerospace engineering.

And last week he realized he had a problem.

I need to have a car by Saturday.

Otherwise I don't know how this is going to work out.

Jacob is from parallel in Texas in the suburbs around Houston, but this summer he's going

to live in Dallas for an internship with a gas turbine manufacturer.

And he knows he's going to need a car to get to and from his job each day.

So he hits up his local used car dealer.

So you go up to the guy and I'm like, hey, I have $4,500, right?

Maybe this will be the best car to go she ain't tactic, right?

But I was like, what car can I buy?

And the dude laughed and said, it'd make a great down payment.

So it was pretty demoralizing.

Jacob spends three days just driving around the Houston area in his parents car visiting

any used car lot he can find.

There was a lot of times I would just be driving along the road would stop say, hey,

name my price.

And they would say, yeah, you should just go somewhere else.

Before long he's meeting people with cars on Craigslist at a band in gas stations.

He's test driving cars that can barely get up to highway speeds.

And the clock is ticking.

...