That hinges on the assumption that the car he’s replacing is a beater, which isn’t necessarily true. All he said is that he could’ve bought another beater, which says that he had bought one before, but the car he’s replacing could’ve been a non-beater that he had bought because he had already learned how pricey constantly replacing beaters is. And by the sounds of it, having to replace the car was an unplanned expense, which says to me that he wasn’t driving a beater.