@Rudster, The RX-8 is pretty reliable, but wearing out your apex seals is still unavoidable (I still love them though).
When you do go look for one here’s a couple videos that I recommend watching. These guys know a lot about rotaries, and built some really quick ones too.
Mate, already seen those videos. And wear on apex and side seals can be extended to roughly 250,000km’s. Which is fairly reasonable for a performance engine. Longer if you premix oil.
First car I had was a 1999 Nissan Sentra GXE. Manual transmission, because who wants to learn to drive on a boring automatic?
It was in pretty great condition when I bought it, and the only thing that I had to get working again was the radiator fan motors. Easy fix. And it only had 130k miles on it at the time. An absolute steal at $1000
It’s awful demise was in the piston rings, and some other undetermined issues. After nearly 6 years of abuse (I drove it like I stole it, daily) and 60k miles later, she started burning oil like mad. Would go through nearly 2 quarts in 40 miles. Never could find a leak… Had to let her go for $500, despite my best attempts at troubleshooting where all the damn oil was going.
My next car is my current car. A 2007 Mazda 3. Manual transmission, because I refuse to go auto.
Picked it up with only 89k miles on it, however the paint is fading pretty fast on the top of the car from years of sitting in the sun without proper care. Poor thing… Still worth the $4k that I paid for it though. It’s so much more fun to drive than the Nissan. Way more acceleration with the larger engine, and drastically less body roll in the corners.
I need to replace the headlights soon. The lenses are absolutely shot beyond the effort it would take to restore them. Brake pads are due soon as well as an oil change. I hate the plastic cover underneath the engine. Makes it a pain in the ass to drain the oil.
Yeah allot of my girlfriends drive some tipical girls cars like a Mini or a Twingo.
But i dont really like those haha.
One car i really do like is a Alfa Romeo 147 GTA (first car i fell in love with),
but those are too expensive to buy because collectors items.
An Alfa Romeo GT is also really nice, but unfortunatlly not the most reliable.
My personal dream car
Volvo V70 R with 6 speed manual
Engine: Turbo 2.5-liter 5 cylinder with 300 hp & 295 lb-ft of torque.
This is an AWD 7 seater that can hit it’s governor at 155 mph easy.
I also really like the Alfa Romeo Giulietta.
But that is still slightlly out of my price range.
Its still one of most stylish hatchbacks at this moment.
The Alfa Romeo Mito is also sweet looking.
But its hard to find one how it like it, with 1.4 Tjet Turbo 155HP engine,
Nero etna color and red leather.
This is tough. I don’t think those cars even came to the U.S, and I don’t know anything about them, so I’m having a hard time coming up with recommendations.