That is essentially the car version of the Sam Vimes “Boots” Theory of Socio-Economic Unfairness.

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. 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. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

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 the 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.

-Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett

The only way I've made used tires work is to put in a lot more leg work - pick a part salvage lots would sell them for like $20-25 ea in the past, and you can pick some good ones with good tread.

EDIT: just checked current prices, it looks like you can get a tire for $25, tire and a wheel would be about $40 ea. Putting a tire on a wheel without the right equipment is very difficult though, maybe some shops will do it for you as a service?