It's almost impossible to find with that price range so it depends what's available in your area, try to find an old GMC or Chevy and watch for rust on frames.

Posted by: @hallkids

I want to spend between $500 to $1,000 for used SUV what your thoughts on that. 

buy some lottery tickets. Your chances are better.

You might find a junkyard willing to sell you one for that kind of money. Of course it's a real crap shoot doing that.

Might even work out depending on what's wrong with it and how handy you are. Some years back I bought a four-wheel-drive AMC Eagle wagon from a junkyard for $500. I'd been looking for parts for another car and saw this thing sitting there and it looked complete. The paint was faded and it was a little banged up but didn't have any serious rust. The car needed a new exhaust system (cat was still OK, rest of it rusted out), the brakes replaced front and rear, and a few other odds and ends but was otherwise fine. The air conditioning even worked.

So after making sure it would run and move under its own power I struck a deal for the car and did the work myself, then drove it for over 10 years. The previous owner had scrapped the Eagle because she couldn't do the work herself and it would have cost too much for a mechanic. (I actually met her, she was working at a scrap metal recycling center when I used the Eagle to haul some out there and she was quite surprised to see her old junked car driving into the place!)

So that kind of thing can work out but really it's the exception rather than the rule. In this case I gambled $500 and won. In general though the lottery probably is a better bet than buying a junkyard vehicle!