Use of the dash in description... this just looks wrong

"Cooper got out of the car and took in the surroundings. On first glance it wasn’t too bad of a place. A medium sized one story house with a driveway that ended in a small car port that had two cars parked under it -- a small sports car and an older beaten down SUV – classic signs of a married man."

I think I'm doing it wrong but I can't think of another way to phrase the sentence well without having either a bunch of short choppy repetitive sounding sentences or having one giant run on sentence.

 

"Cooper got out of the car and took in the surroundings. On first glance it wasn’t too bad of a place, a medium sized one story house with a driveway that ended in a small car port that had two cars parked under it. There sat a small sports car and an older beaten down SUV, classic signs of a married man."

 

The comma you added looks odd to me. That's not bad grammar or anything?

 

Cooper got out of the car and took in the surroundings. On first glance it wasn’t too bad of a place, a medium sized one story house with a driveway that ended in a small car port. Two cars were parked underneath--a small sports car and an older beaten down SUV--classic signs of a married man.

 

What do you mean, “too bad OF a place”? Was the ‘of’ a typo?

He is ‘taking in’ the surroundings, so a series of short sentences would not actually be a bad idea. The second sentence is already a fragment anyway.
Any advice you get will be influenced by our personal style. I don’t often have fragments and dislike pairs of dashes. I also like to remind the reader from time to time about the POV. Others have a totally different style.
Anyway, my way(ish):

Cooper got out of the car and took in the surroundings. On first glance it was not too bad a place--a medium sized, one story house with a driveway ending in a small car port. Two cars were parked there, a sports car and an older, beaten down SUV. Classic signs of a married man, Cooper thought.

 

mad's version reads much better... don't try to cram so much into one poor sentence...

 

Sadly... it wasn't. =(

It might be a southern thing. I don't have the accent, and I'm usually good about not using words like "Y'all" and "fixin" but sometimes it will slip out in my writing.

That was the idea. Thanks!