Not really. This is another thing that falls neatly into Boots Theory.

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. ... A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. ... But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socio-economic unfairness.

A new car, well taken care of, will support a driver for a decade or more. A used car, especially a cheap used car, will have problems you don't know about and you can safely assume the previous owner did not properly care for it if not outright abused it, that will be true more often than it isn't.

Unless that $2000 used beater has major issues (and most do at that price these days) and you don't have the cash to fix them. Then you have a $2000 pile of crap and you still need a car. No, not everyone needs an expensive car, but sometimes there's a good reason to buy something that requires payments.