Looking to buy a sports car - which one of these would you choose?

[rocketpig]

ameratsu said:

rocketpig said:

disolitude said:
Thanks ameratsu for advice. I will have to consider this...

A freind of mine owned a 3000gts sister car, dodge stealth, and told me that timing belt cost him 300 dollars to change.

I was laughing at him thinking he got ripped off cause 300 is way too much for that. Plus I owned a Monte Carlo at the time which doesn't even have a timing belt but a timing chain good for the life of the car and I thought dodge would be the same.

But more and more people like yourself have told me that engine work on that car is very price so he may have not been ripped off after all :)

One of my friends used to work in the parts industry and he always said one thing:

Never, ever buy a Mitsubishi. He quoted me prices on some of the parts and they were outrageous. The 3000GT is probably a kick-ass car but after hearing nightmare stories from someone in the industry, I wouldn't touch one with a ten foot pole.

 

 

I disagree. I personally wouldn't buy a 3000gt for reasons I outlined above, but never buy a mitsubishi? That's not fair. Evos are very capable and reliable cars provided you don't mod the hell out of them. Regardless, you are going to be paying more for parts with a japanese car than with an american car. Getting parts from wreckers and buying oem parts where it's okay to do so instead of genuine are two easy ways to save money.

One of my beefs with the 3000gt vr-4 is that it has 4 wheel steering. That means that above 50km/hr, the rear wheels actually turn slightly under cornering to improve understeer. The problem is that 4ws systems add yet more complexity (read: stuff that can break) to an already complex car. There are lines that take power steering fluid to the rear steering rack, a rear steering pump, etc, etc.

No one ever questioned the reliability of the cars but parts expense is something you have to factor in on a 10+ year old vehicle with 100k on the clock. I should have said something more along the lines of "never, ever buy an old Mitsubishi with a bunch of miles on it". At some point, you will be going into the mechanicals of any car unless it's some dead-reliable econo box with no horsepower. No matter how well something is engineered, horsepower will break it.

Good point about the four wheel steering, BTW. There are reasons why other car companies haven't used it much... Expensive, heavy, and more stuff to break for very little actual gain in performance.