Hot hatch shopping

stoneydude wrote: In reply to SVreX: They gave me a solid $6k offer. Of course I will do my due diligence and try to bump that up with the $7k+ ads I see on autotrader.com for twice the miles. Either way I doubled my money on this car. The wife suggested looking out for good cash cars I could try to flip and eventually trade up to what I want. A few other cash cars did pop up, Saab 9-3 turbo4. Any thoughts mad-machine?

I am more the classic 900 guy.. I did own a NG900, but hated it. Granted it was a sub $1000 car when I got it, but I did not like how the turbo power kicked in and how it (badly) effected the steering. I do understand that the 9-3s were better (my NG900 was 1st year production) and the last ones even better than those.

The turbo 4 is the engine you want, it is a stout engine that slowly evolved from the same engine in my 87 900 Turbo, you just need to worry about sludge in the T7 models.

Inside, they are HUGE. Much larger than you would expect and the hatch area can swallow most anything a baby can throw at it. The fold down rear seat is a thing of magic, safety, and weight. unlike many, it is designed to stay upright in a rear end collision, you can feel the heft when you go to move it. The Swedes take safety seriously.. but unlike Volvo, Saab also took performance seriously

Klayfish wrote: Yes, yes it does. The power curve is truly like a table. It goes straight up from idle. The engine makes gobs of torque from 1800-4500rpm. But anything above that is just wasting gas. By 5200rpm or so, it's purely noise with almost no acceleration. You get used to it and learn when to shift. What I like about it is that since the peak of power is in the range I mention, 99% of the time you're driving in normal conditions, you're right in the sweet spot. Makes it easy to squeeze into a hole in rush hour traffic.

I don't have a Focus ST (I wish), but what you are saying appears to be the opposite of this graph:

I looks like it makes plenty of power all the way to redline, peaking at 5500. Doesn't even fall off until almost 6k. Does the tune make high end power worse than stock?

Saying it's a "table" may be a bit of an overstatement...it's not like throwing out an NHRA parachute once you cross 5000rpm, but the drop off in acceleration is very noticeable. I saw that graph before I put the tune in, but the seat of the pants feel isn't exactly matching the hp curve. It closer resembles the tq curve. From roughly 1500-1600 rpm on up, the torque builds incredibly fast. The shove in the back you get is really strong. But that shove begins to fade after 4500rpm and it feels like it's given all it has by the time you hit 5250 where tq/hp numbers cross. Maybe it just has to do with the fall off in the torque, but the car feels much stronger in lower rpm. It was that way when the car was stock, but after the tune, it VERY much feels like a low end car. Looking at the graph, at 2500-3000rpm the difference in tq is huge...then from about 2200 to 5000 there is a notable hp difference too. So from the low 2000 range up to 5k, it's making significantly more hp AND tq. But by time you get to 5000, the numbers are back to stock.

And last one, what about the Dodge dart? Look for the turbo or non?

stoneydude wrote: And last one, what about the Dodge dart? Look for the turbo or non?

For what it's worth, I recently read that Dodge/Fiat will quit selling the Dart in 2017, and will be offering fewer trim levels/packages until then. That may be something to think about if you're considering a purchase. On one side, that may mean you can get a nice initial deal, but it may also negatively affect resale value, parts availability, etc.

stoneydude wrote: And last one, what about the Dodge dart? Look for the turbo or non?

Neither...from what I've heard about it.