Do it.

get a manual, and your 86 adventure will have a new beginning, and you wont regret it.

this car was made to be manual.

Put some 4.88 final drive gears in it and forced induction and you will be good to go.

If you can find a used one, you may be able to lose a little bit of money.

If you end up going new...take some lube, because you are gonna get effed in the "a".

SELL! SELL! SELL!

That's too bad. I have color regrets every day myself. They were all good colors. But I really wanted Toyota's Black Forest Green.

Personally I think the automatic can handle it, I've seen it done, and I don't think Toyota would have made it an option, and left so much space ABOVE the motor unless it could handle it.

Had a few bikes myself, no car will ever feel like a bike.

Good luck with the trade. Hope it works out.

After watching a bone stock AT dyno a few weeks ago.... Definitely go for the manual if you can. Good luck.

I don't think AT vs MT acceleration capability is the issue.

Trading it in will cost you more than $1000 in losses.

The issue is that on the title there will now be a owner already. Therefore, whoever buys the car you traded in will be the second owner regardless of mileage. Not to mention that the dealership now must sell the car as a used car.

I think that's the main issue. But I could be wrong.

Taxes.

Sales tax?

In most places, one pays sales tax only on the "trade difference." That is, if he trades in a car that they give him $20,000 credit for, then buys a $23,000 car, he pays sales tax only on the $3,000 difference.

It's not inconsequential, but the tax is not on the full price of the car. Otherwise, the citizen would be effectively paying sales tax twice on the car, which would be unfair.

There may be some areas where this is not the case.

I did not know that. That is great news.

I know this is going to sound like a boring, "dad" thing to say, but think it about it this way: If you had $2000 sitting in your savings account and someone came up to you and offered to install a manual transmission in your car for that $2000, would you run to the ATM, take all $2000 out, and give it to him?

If you trade your Auto FR-S in for a $2000 hit, you'd actually be losing more than $2000 because of your loan interest. When you have a loan and the $2000 is spread out over the life of the loan, it doesn't seem like a big deal but I think it's important to imagine yourself handing over $2000 in cash as you consider this deal.

Yeah. Think of it like this: Consider a silly scenario, though possible, where a fickle customer (your next wife, maybe ;)) comes in and buys a new FR-S on Monday, decides to trade for a different color on Tuesday, and repeats this on Wednesday and Thursday. (YOU married her, I didn't!) Well, now she's purchased four new cars for around $100,000. In only four days! Just to own one new FR-S, at last, on Friday when she decides that she's finally satisfied. (Don't let her go shopping alone... ;) )

It would hardly be fair to pay 7-10% California sales tax on $100k, now would it?

So, anyway... :)

There's another important point to consider here: If you sell your current car privately, you do NOT get any sales tax benefit. So, if you're sensible, you must get that much more when selling privately (which can be anything from a major nuisance to downright dangerous these days). If you cannot clear sufficient profit from a private sale vs the trade-in value + tax benefit, then it's a great deal easier to just drop off your old car at the dealer and drive off in your new car, and get that sales tax credit against the new car purchase.

I'll leave you to work out the math on that to see how much more you need to sell your car privately.

This practice also encourages people to trade-in their cars.

Exactly.

I alluded to that in an earlier post. The interest on his loan is not spread out evenly over the term of the loan; the first payment is almost all interest, and slowly diminishes until the final payment which is hardly any interest. The point I made to him is that his loan balance would not be much diminished over these first few months payments.

So, you're correct that he needs to factor that cost into his decision. This is actually likely to be "lost" on most customers who won't appreciate the "true cost" to make this trade. Most people will just look at their current payment, and compare it to their new payment following the trade (which will be back to payment no. 1 again). They won't realize how much that actually cost them just for the finance difference. Call it a "hidden" cost.

This is an excellent point, Dad! :)

What the hell was I thinking?

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