Depending on your willingness/ability/and luck, the fix could be as cheap as several hundred bucks (A lucky junkyard find that you drop in yourself) to four or five grand (a reman block and you pay a good mechanic) I'm guessing your heads are ok, but I'd do them at the same time anyway. A decent remanufactured is probably 1800-2500 bucks. (A new crate engine is gonna go several grand) Rodeo/ Amigo/Axiom 3.5 will certainly work. The direct injected engine in newer Axioms will not....not as a direct swap anyway. That would require swapping the ECU, and some other things would have to be done as well, making it a real project. If the car is in otherwise good shape, consider this; you'd get next to nothing for it as a cripple...certainly not enough to get any kind of reliable vehicle (unless you know someone taking up crack as their new past time). Putting an engine in, is still gonna be cheaper than the above mentioned 1998 Honda. The sad reality is...you'd make much more cutting it up, and selling the pieces/parts on here, than you'd ever get for it as it sits now. Wait'll Isuzu disappears altogether from the US in a couple years...The value will really tank. Fix it and go another 100thousand in it. Seems the most reasonable answer.