Best thing I ever did was get a daily, I bought a Toyota corolla e11. Perfect boot size, big enough for all the crappy stuff, comfy, and went well enough not to worry about leaving it in the frost. it had 200000 miles plus on it, and it was dirt cheap to run/insure. In the two years I had it, it wanted a new battery (£40) , some front tyres (£35 each) and a handbrake cable (£60 fitted)... I couldn't really argue at that. All in all I paid less than the cost of new front suspension on the Teg, and still had change for a tank of fuel.
I had never really considered a daily hack, mainly thought it was going to be too expensive to run two cars, but its no different. You can only drive one at a time anyway. But after nearly 6 years of daily driving the Teg, it was so nice to do the xmas shop for example in something that could be parked anywhere, scraped or what ever and I wouldn't care. After doing that I don't think I could daily the Teg again,...makes me appreciate it more too.
Cleaning it regularly will be fine through the winter keeping it looked after, but for piece of mind in the panic season where driving seems to attract idiots in car parks and other incidents along the way, a crappy car will always be the way forward.