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Few years ago, I saw a gorgeous 97 with 44,000 org miles. I saw it at an intersection during traffic.
I said to myself "WOW, if only I could buy that car. It would be perfect. "
Actually I said those words to my passenger who told me with absolute certainly "I would never be able to get that car" for some reason or other. When people say things like that, really gives me encouragement to prove them wrong.
So what did I do? Slammed it in park, jumped out in mid-rush our traffic, held up the light, and got that phone number.
Turns out it was for sale. And the owner had just acquired it, same deal old original owner garage kept never drove it.
And he was getting offers for it left and right, people just like me, jumping out of cars (probably not quite that dramatic)
He told me 6500 I could have it.
I sold my daily the next day for a reasonable price, came up with the total somehow, and went back to get it. With no car of my own, mind you.
I was told, "not yet" he wanted to wait. Or something. Some kinda crap.
So now I had no car, was waiting for this guy to sell his to me. yeah
I borrowed a Honda from my step father and drove that pos for almost a year before this guy finally decided to sell it to me.
$7200 he wanted now. Raised the price on me after months of waiting, after telling me 6500 and I sold my car...
bastard.
anyways. He let me sign the title at some point which made me feel better.
Then finally, it was mine. Months of waiting had paid off, sort of, I had finally managed to get the perfect kouki, the best 20 year old car I'd ever seen.
Leather seats were new to me. It was very comfortable and clean as you might expect.
I started driving it as my only car of course. My new daily driver. A gorgeous white 97 with just... 45,000 miles. How perfect?
It only took a couple of days for me to realize something fundamentally wrong about the situation. Personally, deep down, I like to modify my vehicle. Whether its a ship, plane, car, whatever- I like to do 'things' to them. You know?
Well. The problem was, this car was already 'perfect'. It had at last 150,000 more miles to go before there would be the slightest thing wrong with it.
And anything I did to it, between now and then (10+ years later) would render it no longer perfect.
Would reduce it's inherent value. Not just to me; to the entire world. You drop 20k on a car like this and it's value would barely budge.
It was already worth more than most modified cars in this class the way it sat.
It was the catch22 of a lifetime. Here I was, the most mod friendly owner on the planet, with the perfect car, the ideal canvas that we all search for daily, useful for any successful build, and I couldn't touch it for 10 or more years without ruining it and reducing it's value, even by pouring money into it. I had only two options: drive it, or sell it. Modification wasn't an option.
I tried driving it first. And was happy for the most part about that. It was a clean smooth ride, give you that.
The main issue was economy: 25mpg is a minimum for today's standards.
V8 6-speed 240sx can do 30mpg and 400rwhp and would even lighten up the car and balance it better given the aluminum engine.
An sr20det could provide twice the factory power and more miles per gallon as well.
So why should anyone suffer with around half the power and 5 less miles per gallon? Just to have a clean original car?
Couldn't handle it.
Sad but, I had to sell it, because what the hell was I supposed to do with it? After all that.
The lesson for me (as a college student budget) was. You can't really drive the cleanest, original cars; they are for looking at, and if the mileage is very low, you can't even mod them.
So it's just for looking at mostly.
Anybody that actually drives an original specimen like that- more power to you.
literally. I don't know how anybody could stand to be stuck with less than 200hp let alone less than 500 these days while also pulling a ~25mpg standard.
New 4-cylinder cars (VW) are doing 500 piece of cake, I've seen it. And those are what, 30-33mpg?
Its a relic until it gets 200k and ragged out so somebody can enhance it with a little swap action. Until then, show piece.
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