If I choose cheap and reliable, what's the car for me?

Appleseed said:

In reply to kevinatfms :

1st gen Focus wheels are 4x108.

All - ALL - Ford engineered four lug vehicles, except some 60s Mustangs and Falcons, are this bolt pattern.

There are weirdities like Festivas (not Fords - Kia-built Mazda 121s) and '91-up Escorts (not Fords either - Mazdas with Ford engines)

But the neat thing is, as far as I have been able to ascertain, all Fords with 4 on 4.25" (it's as metric as 6.35mm) have the same hub pilot and brake rotor pilot.  MkIII Escort rotors from 1981 fit Ford Contour hubs and vise versa.

Has anyone ever tried SVT Contour wheels on a Fiesta?

Anyway, the answer is Fit.  They just work.  Adjust the valves at 150k miles or so, replace the A/C clutch relay every three or four years (genuine Honda only), if the axles have mass dampers on them then get them replaced under recall.  Drive.

NOHOME said:

bobzilla said:

$7K gets you into modern Korean car territory with less miles. Accent hatch manual is fun and has some tech still. Reliable, efficient etc. Rio's wih a manual will usually be base trim with manual windows, no cruise etc but still fun. 

All the hondas on your list are going to be beat and high miles because honda tax. 

Acquaintance now on third Kia engine; car  is less than 2 years old. Second hand info so no details except rod knock apparent  when he left yesterday. 

Good friend who works in machine shop says that after industrial work, Korean cars are next best customers for engine rebuilds.

Another good  friend who runs Tow Truck company says they are a reliable source of income. 

While I understand that all brands are going to have the odd lemon, these are pretty solid indicators that Korean cars blow up a lot more than others or I would have heard from the same sources. Not gonna put Korean and "reliable" in the same room.

Kia owners also tend toward the reactive-maintenance end of the mechanical sympathy scale.  Very common to see them come in massively overdue for oil change, nothing on the dipstick, need to pass emissions (plates expired last month so it is now an emergency)

My favorite is the guy (second hand story) who bragged to my acquaintance that he had his car for 60k miles and never changed the oil, because if it breaks it is under warranty.  Then my acquaintance reminded him that failure to show proof of required servicing voids the warranty.  His face reportedly went white as a sheet.

There's a reason why half of the grid is either a Miata or an BMW at any given endurance race.  You have a Miata already, so now it's time for the bimmer.  I drive my E36 M3 to and from HPDEs and don't give it a second thought.  FWD is going to be a let down after the Miata experience.

Edit:  I'm a Honda fanboy and have raced many FWD cars, so I'm not a FWD hater.  But once you develop a FWD platform to handle well, it's a little too stiff for a street car.  My $.02.

Having no experience with the car, but I dig them. What about last gen Celica GT, not GTS. Super light and supposedly food suspension. Good luck finding under 170k in that price range though. 

I have no track experience at all, so I'll boldly endorse any gen Fit or first gen Focii. My all time favorite engine is a 2.0 duratec with an hot intake and muffler. Redline? What redline?

Or a 90s accord. I'm a slut for a good 92/3 in any context. 

You say a Boxster is too much car for you? What do you mean by that? Too expensive, or too fast? It sounds like you want a slow car, and there isn't anything wrong with that. But I've done enough track days with Fits in my group that I think they are comically/painfully slow. Sure, they handled well, but man they are SLOW down the straights. It seems to me that you'd be spending so much time watching your mirrors and pointing every other car by that you couldn't really have that good of a time. 

I used to race a Datsun 1200 that was in the slowest class in my race group (72 HP), and when I was able to get a faster car, it was such a fun and exciting experience to be able to pass other cars! Once I quit racing, I did track days in a Miata, which was frustrating (as you know) because everybody can pass you down the straight then hold you up in the turns. So when I got a Boxster, it was much quicker than a Miata (but still lots of cars able to blast by it in a straightline), but it was that much faster that not as many cars could get by. It also seems like you get more respect in a Porsche than a Miata and people move over to let you by.   

I say this with no actual knowledge, just what I've heard.  But all Porsches have high running costs.  With only 177whp that Boxster in particular isn't a rocketship.  In fact, it's probably close to my FFS Miata, but I'm not sure what parts cost, or how reliable they are.  Porsches don't appear at the top of reliability lists, and even the Boxster wasn't a "cheap" car.  It's just not something I've researched, and it's a bit of a snap decision given how quickly I'd likely have to move to make it happen.

That's good advice about truly slow cars though.  Most of the people I see who rave about slow car fast are in specific racing series for them.  They're not often mixing it up in HPDEs which is where I'd likely be for at least a year.  I guess I've forgotten about point-bys since I spent a good portion of my time on track while on a bike where you just get by where you can.  Maybe I should just suck it up and put my 97 out there again like I used to.

Anything with a 1NZ-FE.  Scion, Yaris, etc.
Mostly any Korean thing that doesn't say Genesis (nothing wrong with the Genesis, but it's a bit luxo with more parts to fail)
Nice examples of things with the 3800.  Buicks tend to be less failure prone than some of the other GMs, although the Chevys are holding up pretty well.

When I look for reliable econoboxes, one of my personal criteria is timing chain instead of belt.  They're not always more reliable, but they don't need to be changed every other year, and they usually give you about 10k miles of warning before they self-destruct.  I'm not a big fan of engines that require scheduled partial engine surgery to prevent the possibility of turning it into scrap metal.

Others will disagree, just my opinion.

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

NOHOME said:

bobzilla said:

$7K gets you into modern Korean car territory with less miles. Accent hatch manual is fun and has some tech still. Reliable, efficient etc. Rio's wih a manual will usually be base trim with manual windows, no cruise etc but still fun. 

All the hondas on your list are going to be beat and high miles because honda tax. 

Acquaintance now on third Kia engine; car  is less than 2 years old. Second hand info so no details except rod knock apparent  when he left yesterday. 

Good friend who works in machine shop says that after industrial work, Korean cars are next best customers for engine rebuilds.

Another good  friend who runs Tow Truck company says they are a reliable source of income. 

While I understand that all brands are going to have the odd lemon, these are pretty solid indicators that Korean cars blow up a lot more than others or I would have heard from the same sources. Not gonna put Korean and "reliable" in the same room.

Kia owners also tend toward the reactive-maintenance end of the mechanical sympathy scale.  Very common to see them come in massively overdue for oil change, nothing on the dipstick, need to pass emissions (plates expired last month so it is now an emergency)

 

My favorite is the guy (second hand story) who bragged to my acquaintance that he had his car for 60k miles and never changed the oil, because if it breaks it is under warranty.  Then my acquaintance reminded him that failure to show proof of required servicing voids the warranty.  His face reportedly went white as a sheet.

Part of what steered me to my first purchase in 2002 was a 2001 Elantra from Arizona. car had 61000 miles and the original black oil filter and the paint mark on the drain plug untouched. Towed in because it stopped running. Dipstick was so baked with burnt oil that it was almost impossible to read. Pulled the cam cover and it looked like it was still on.... perfect imprint of the underside in sludge. Pulled the pan and the sludge around the crank was in the shape of the oil pan. Customer had just added a quart of oil every 5000 miles. Didn't do a single thing of maintenance. 4 different brands and sizes of tires. front pads on the backing plate. interior literally covered in cigarette ash. 

60k miles and literally NOTHING touched except to add oil when the light came on.