Just put money away until I had enough saved up. I've started doing it again to get a motor into my other car. It can be expensive, but it's really not worth putting yourself into serious debt for. I had a friend who wanted to take a $7500 personal loan to fix up his neon. I told him for that kind of money, you could buy a much nicer car or put it away and look into a house or property. A cars basically worthless after a few years anyway.