What’s a decent cheap car go for these days?

We’re looking to buy our son his first car when he gets his license in the next couple months. Basically I was just wondering the least you could spend on a car that you would still feel good about putting your kid in.

Like when I was 16, you could buy a beater car for like 500 bucks and your parents could buy you one for 1500 bucks that was actually pretty nice.

When we originally started talking about a car for him, I was thinking like $3000 but now I’m not even sure if 5000 is doable. But I literally don’t have $10,000 to buy this kid a car. That’s not much less than what my car is worth right now.