Florida Car Registration/Licencing/Insurance?

Hey guys,

Just planning my Epic US Holiday for next year, and was hoping you guys could help a confused foreigner out with some info.

Basically, my wife and I are planning pick up a car in Miami and spend about a month driving through the south, finishing up in Houston. I'll put a post up in a little while asking for suggestions about places to visit along the way, places to avoid etc, but before then I was hoping for some advice about a car.

After checking out the cost of car hire (particularly given the amount of miles we plan on driving, one-way), it appears the best way to do this is to buy a car for the drive.

We can go one of two ways - either buy a sweet classic car, then ship it back home to Australia at the end of the trip, or buy a cheap car to get us through the drive and sell it/give it away at the end. Probably the cheapish modern car (Crown Vic most likely, maybe a cheap pickup truck) will be the way to go - I'm a good roadside mechanic but doing thousands of miles in a newly-purchased 40 year old car might be stretching the friendship.

Either way, we'll need to sort out the car-ownership legalities before we set off. What I was hoping someone could tell me is what is necessary to get on the road in Florida.

In Australia, when you buy a car, you need to have a safety inspection done by a licenced mechanic, then pay your state road tax and you're done. I was hoping someone could confirm what the process over there is?

Obviously you need to buy a car with clean title (we don't do "title" over here), but what other hoops do they make you jump through? Has any other non-US citizen had any experience with buying/registering/licencing a car in the states (Canadians on this forum maybe?).

Any advice with this would be appreciated - Have been dreaming about this trip forever, can't wait to put the plan in to action.

Edit - I've done some googling, and the Florida govt website is worse than useless, so anything you can tell me is fantastic
Thanks so much

Nick