How do you buy your project cars–ready to run or a total train wreck?

I would prefer a clean, fully running car I can drive home. 

I end up buying trainwrecks. 

I buy running cars and turn them into trainwrecks

The last one I bought turned out to be both at once. I drove it home unaware that there was a tiny crack in the block which grew big enough to mean pulling the engine. And doing an LS swap. And after that was running around for a while, the transmission died.

My 914 fell into my lap, it still has yet to run. Train wreck.

My Opel drove home 80 miles with no issues. I don't want a lick of the drivetrain in it. Train wreck.

"Are you sure its a car?"

"Why are you taking it apart?"

Both phrases have been spoken in my general vicinity. They may have been directed at me specifically.

I will drag or drive anything back to my atelier.

If I buy it, someone else decided that they were done with it. Sometimes it ends up being minor, sometimes it's a train wreck. Typically it seems my #1 criteria is that it doesn't run and requires being winched onto the trailer. I have learned my lesson and I avoid stuff that needs bodywork, I stick with mechanical issues.

I bring home runners; my wife encouraged this because she saw how on happy I was with the one and only train wreck I dragged home.

I like driving cars not fixing them and while I enjoy small projects I do not enjoy large ones because that means the car will be down for months on end. I've got a 90 day window of attention span on non running vehicles. 

I prefer running project cars. It may not be perfect but it moves under its own power. I'm far more likely to make a ton of small improvements while driving and enjoying the car than I am building a perfect car from the frame up.

I buy cars like I buy puzzles for my kids.  In 100 different pieces in a box.

Except with project cars, there's probably more than one box.

And some of the pieces are missing.

And there's no instructions.

And something will need to be welded. 

In reply to Colin Wood :

I buy cars owned previously by Poseurs. Cosmetically they are shot. Mechanically they still have greatness in them.  Since racers remove everything not needed to go fast  I'm way ahead of the game.