American Muscle Cars

Then what you need is Grassroots Motorsports magazine, and in particular the forums at their web site. The basic premise of the entire magazine is to sell it to the guys who have bought off of Craigslist the car that they lusted after as teenagers and now need help and advice on how to rebuild as inexpensively as possible. There is a ton of institutional knowledge there, no matter how odd the car or the problem.

 

There is no such thing as a cheap Porsche.

 

October is the best time of year to buy one. People often decide to dump them when winter is coming, so they are a bit cheaper then, as they are always pricier in April.

You get to drive it top down in the fall. It's a good deal.

 

One of the bona fide originals. Note the three square metal tubes at the bottom of the door. They were for camera mounts, so they could get interior shots of McQueen at the wheel while he was driving.

 

What got me started on the clutch lusting was my cousin brought over his used Boxster (2007 or so I think) that he bought for $14k. I put the top down and wound it through the gears for about 30 mins and had a blast. Then I researched it and found out if a spring dies, its $4k to get to the $10 spring because of the mid-engine design. That shifted my sights. So yeah, the buy-in is small but the follow up is anything but small.

 

Yeah, when I was 20, a buddy of mine got a Boxster and there's a long, straight downhill road that runs about a mile near the restaurant we worked at. He asked me to grab him a coffee on my break, so I told him only if I could take the Porsche. He agreed and I ran that thing up 120 mph down that road before I chickened out and slowed down. Could have stayed on the throttle for another quarter mile, it seemed like.

I've wanted one of my own ever since.

 

Oh, they're nice as hell, don't get me wrong. It's the idea of getting a cheap one and fixing things as necessary that I was warning against.

Spend 6,500 on a Miata and generally you'll get a car that's in decent shape. Insurance is cheap. Parts are inexpensive, and if you have any tool sense whatsoever you can wrench on it and do most routine maintenance yourself. There are a lot of wear items on a Porsche that are pricey, and the internals can be outright damn expensive.

 

All fair points. But the Miata isn't an aspirational vehicle for me, fun as it may be to drive. A 2000 Boxster cabriolet with a clean title and 37K miles on it for $12K is worth the regular maintenance to me, particularly since it wouldn't be my daily driver and, thus, wouldn't get as much wear as my regular car.

 

There is a Triple Black with under 50K on ebay right now for 10,495

 

These are worth remembering, too:





All-Original 1970 Plymouth Superbird

 

Saw that car on the road once. Pretty darn ridiculous, but fascinating to my teenage self.