too old?

I've been trying to look for a car since I moved out from campus to Trappers Cove. It takes about 15 minutes to campus by car but by bus, it takes almost an hour and the bus only comes every hour. It is especially inconvenient when I have to work late nights and weekends and missing the bus is a disaster because I'll have an extra hour in my hands with nothing to do. Recently I've managed to arrange my work schedule around the bus schedule but it is still takes up too much time. I always like to be early when waiting for something or else I'll get paranoid like I keep thinking that I'll miss the bus by a few seconds or something like that. So I'll always get to the bus stop 5 minutes before the bus is scheduled to be there. Then they are usually late by a few minutes but I would never take the chance to get to the bus stop late because of that due to my tendency to get paranoid. So I really do need a car.

I was looking through online classifieds and the Lansing State Journal classifieds every day and today I found one Zimbabwean guy who is selling two cars.

1) 1996 Geo Prism with Toyota Corolla engine, 120k miles, first owner, manual windows and sidescreens, no cd player, very clean in the inside, a few spots of rust on the bonnet, test drive resulted in a good condition engine (guyz of car expert might have different view) ---> USD 2500

2) 1992 Toyota Corolla, 165k miles, manual windows and sidescreens, very clean in the inside, test drive resulted in good on normal road but shaky on highway ---> USD 1700 (yet to be bargained)

Now I'm in a dilemma. I kinda prefer the size of 2) but then the mileage is keeping me away from buying it. 1) is great except for the size. I'm kinda small built and I feel more comfortable with a smaller car. However, that should not be a problem because I can eventually get used to the car after driving it for a bit. But after consulting dad (good at buying old cars), he recommended me to get cars that have less than 100k miles. On the other hand, this will be my first car and I'm still not entirely a good driver. So I shouldn't get a car that's too nice and new first right? Furthermore, I'll only be needing it to drive from home to school and back and maybe groceries once or twice a month.

Argh! Dilemmas dilemmas. I'm also afraid that if I buy it now, I might find something that's better or cheaper. If I don't buy it now, I might not be able to find something like it anymore. Sigh, I didn't realize looking for a car is such a tedious task.