Need ideas for possible (new-to-me) used car

[serialk11r]

Mazdas aren't very good on gas though are they?
A 2ZZ powered car sounds right for the job IMO...although the gearing is very short. You might want to pull the 6th gear from a Matrix XRS or something and swap it in, that could save you several hundred dollars a year in gas as it cuts your rpms down 12.5%. I wonder if you can pull the 5th gear from one of Toyota's 5 speed manuals. Probably not. Actually, probably not even worthwhile.
Or, an MR-S which has a low cruising gear would do the trick too.

[7thgear]

1. stick to FWD, less things to break

2. stick to a FWD car that uses a solid rear beam in the back, contributes to less things to break (and if you ever happen to bend it, used ones are cheap in the rip-and-pulls

3. get a 4 door to pay less insurance (although not always the case)

so i would suggest a VW Citi (or City?) Golf/Jetta or toyota yaris, the ford fiesta also fits.

these cars will cost you very little up front, and little in long term care, they are comfortable and more than adequate for all of a persons daily car driving needs.

[suprachica79]

Originally Posted by 7thgear

1. stick to FWD, less things to break

2. stick to a FWD car that uses a solid rear beam in the back, contributes to less things to break (and if you ever happen to bend it, used ones are cheap in the rip-and-pulls

3. get a 4 door to pay less insurance (although not always the case)

so i would suggest a VW Citi (or City?) Golf/Jetta or toyota yaris, the ford fiesta also fits.

these cars will cost you very little up front, and little in long term care, they are comfortable and more than adequate for all of a persons daily car driving needs.

Thanks for the suggestions. I would love to see some actual real-world mpg tests rather than EPA, you never know if it's really accurate.

[Exage]

Originally Posted by 7thgear

1. stick to FWD, less things to break

2. stick to a FWD car that uses a solid rear beam in the back, contributes to less things to break (and if you ever happen to bend it, used ones are cheap in the rip-and-pulls

3. get a 4 door to pay less insurance (although not always the case)

so i would suggest a VW Citi (or City?) Golf/Jetta or toyota yaris, the ford fiesta also fits.

Interesting, my car meets all three points. Awesome

[serialk11r]

Originally Posted by suprachica79

Thanks for the suggestions. I would love to see some actual real-world mpg tests rather than EPA, you never know if it's really accurate.

When it comes to mpg the EPA city number is probably pretty good estimate for stop and go driving. When it comes to highway you can either dig up a BSFC chart and do some extrapolations or go on the internet and search forums for that specific car where people report their highway cruising mpg in highest gear. EPA highway test doesn't represent normal highway driving.

[53Driver]

Considering what you have said, I would probably steer clear of an S2000. I owned a 2004 S2000 (AP2) for close to 2 years. I loved the car and it was a lot of fun. I also had the OEM hardtop on it which was nice. Here is why I would probably steer clear of it considering your situation.

First, I drove 70 miles round trip to get to work. It was all highway miles and the best I ever got was 25mpg and that was being "easy" on the throttle. Second, you go through rear tires at the cyclic rate. Be prepared to change rear tires every 20K miles. Third, road noise (and it gets worse as the rear tires wear). At 150 miles round trip every day, you might have a headache every day you get home. Fourth, if you don't have the hard top they are easy to break into and car thieves love to steal them (I was military so my car was either on base or in my garage so fortunately I didn't have to worry about this as much). Fifth, I see you are in CT? Driving a RWD sports car in inclement weather conditions is not always the best idea (especially if you are driving 150 miles round trip). Last but not least, good luck finding a low mileage one that doesn't have any issues for around 10K (yes, they occasionally show up but you have to be in the right place at the right time). They are fun and reliable though and someday I will own another one.

A used 350Z may be a good compromise, but once again don't expect stellar MPG and be prepared to replace rear tires just like the S. I had a 2003 and I think I averaged around the same as the S with the exact same drive. You do pay more for insurance too so that has to be taken into account and the Z is probably just as limited on room as the S when you take into account the rear strut bar.

Now, I would highly recommend looking into an Accord coupe. I've owned 2, a 1999 EX with the 4 cylinder and a 2003 LX with the 6 cylinder. Both were fun, got great mpg, reliable, comfortable and the insurance was cheap. The 4 cylinder was "only" around 150bhp but it was still "peppy".

Remember, the money you save on gas and insurance can go towards either a) paying down your college debt quickly so you can get that "fun" car you really want or b) put into savings that can later be used to buy that "fun" car as a 2nd weekend warrior type car. Just a thought.

[suprachica79]

Originally Posted by serialk11r

When it comes to mpg the EPA city number is probably pretty good estimate for stop and go driving. When it comes to highway you can either dig up a BSFC chart and do some extrapolations or go on the internet and search forums for that specific car where people report their highway cruising mpg in highest gear. EPA highway test doesn't represent normal highway driving.

I mean, I just found a mx-5 mazdaspeed and EPA says 20 city/26 highway. I get that it has a turbo, but it's a 4-banger that weighs 2600lbs, how is that even possible? And my highway driving for the most part is put it on cruise control and forget about it, so I have a feeling I could get better than that. And after looking at different insurance costs, I'm almost leaning towards a miata, it's by far the cheapest car to insure, $50 cheaper a month than an accord, altima, fit, or prius, $75 cheaper than an s2000, and $120 cheaper than a sentra spec-v or an rsx. Amazing lol

[serialk11r]

How is it possible? Well for one thing, Subaru engines got complete crap mpg despite being only 2L. When you throw a turbo on, you end up invariably losing a little bit of energy through the turbo when it attempts to produce boost when you don't need it. Turbo engines are also lower compression, which hurts low load economy a lot.

But the most important factor for mpg is gearing. The maximum efficiency level is obtained at somewhere between 70-100% load at any given rpm, you increase the rpm, you decrease the load. Oh may I add, the efficiency usually falls slowly until around 30% load, and then drops off very fast. On an S2000 for example, the highway rpm is so high that the engine is operating in abysmal conditions for efficiency. I reckon if they took that stupid 0.82 or whatever 6th gear and dropped it to 0.6, the car would be doing 35 mpg easily. Now as for why it can't get say 45-50mpg, it has horrible aerodynamics and since the engine revs to 9000 there were probably a lot of low end efficiency tradeoffs.

For Mazda, I think the situation was similar to Subaru, their engines were just not very good in the efficiency department (otherwise Skyactiv wouldn't be claiming huge friction reduction numbers just to match the fuel economy of competitors like Hyundai and Honda), and I believe the MX-5 has short gears. And since it's a convertible, it has shit aerodynamics.

The 2ZZ is pretty remarkable in that it doesn't get total crap mpg despite short gears and high revs
Thanks to toughening EPA standards, in a few years time we'll stop seeing these nonsensical cruising gears, and 6 speeds will become the bare minimum in a transmission.

[suprachica79]

Originally Posted by 53Driver

Considering what you have said, I would probably steer clear of an S2000. I owned a 2004 S2000 (AP2) for close to 2 years. I loved the car and it was a lot of fun. I also had the OEM hardtop on it which was nice. Here is why I would probably steer clear of it considering your situation.

First, I drove 70 miles round trip to get to work. It was all highway miles and the best I ever got was 25mpg and that was being "easy" on the throttle. Second, you go through rear tires at the cyclic rate. Be prepared to change rear tires every 20K miles. Third, road noise (and it gets worse as the rear tires wear). At 150 miles round trip every day, you might have a headache every day you get home. Fourth, if you don't have the hard top they are easy to break into and car thieves love to steal them (I was military so my car was either on base or in my garage so fortunately I didn't have to worry about this as much). Fifth, I see you are in CT? Driving a RWD sports car in inclement weather conditions is not always the best idea (especially if you are driving 150 miles round trip). Last but not least, good luck finding a low mileage one that doesn't have any issues for around 10K (yes, they occasionally show up but you have to be in the right place at the right time). They are fun and reliable though and someday I will own another one.

A used 350Z may be a good compromise, but once again don't expect stellar MPG and be prepared to replace rear tires just like the S. I had a 2003 and I think I averaged around the same as the S with the exact same drive. You do pay more for insurance too so that has to be taken into account and the Z is probably just as limited on room as the S when you take into account the rear strut bar.

Now, I would highly recommend looking into an Accord coupe. I've owned 2, a 1999 EX with the 4 cylinder and a 2003 LX with the 6 cylinder. Both were fun, got great mpg, reliable, comfortable and the insurance was cheap. The 4 cylinder was "only" around 150bhp but it was still "peppy".

Remember, the money you save on gas and insurance can go towards either a) paying down your college debt quickly so you can get that "fun" car you really want or b) put into savings that can later be used to buy that "fun" car as a 2nd weekend warrior type car. Just a thought.

Well I'm definitely not going with an s2000 now haha, I figured it was probably a bit impractical for someone who commutes as much as me. I'm looking hard at the accord and altima coupes now, they are just damn heavy for the power, but I need something that is good on gas and they are relatively cheap on insurance. Thanks for letting me know your experience, it's really helping me to get real world situations, there's only so much information I can read about specs haha

[suprachica79]

Originally Posted by serialk11r

How is it possible? Well for one thing, Subaru engines got complete crap mpg despite being only 2L. When you throw a turbo on, you end up invariably losing a little bit of energy through the turbo when it attempts to produce boost when you don't need it. Turbo engines are also lower compression, which hurts low load economy a lot.

But the most important factor for mpg is gearing. The maximum efficiency level is obtained at somewhere between 70-100% load at any given rpm, you increase the rpm, you decrease the load. Oh may I add, the efficiency usually falls slowly until around 30% load, and then drops off very fast. On an S2000 for example, the highway rpm is so high that the engine is operating in abysmal conditions for efficiency. I reckon if they took that stupid 0.82 or whatever 6th gear and dropped it to 0.6, the car would be doing 35 mpg easily. Now as for why it can't get say 45-50mpg, it has horrible aerodynamics and since the engine revs to 9000 there were probably a lot of low end efficiency tradeoffs.

For Mazda, I think the situation was similar to Subaru, their engines were just not very good in the efficiency department (otherwise Skyactiv wouldn't be claiming huge friction reduction numbers just to match the fuel economy of competitors like Hyundai and Honda), and I believe the MX-5 has short gears. And since it's a convertible, it has shit aerodynamics.

The 2ZZ is pretty remarkable in that it doesn't get total crap mpg despite short gears and high revs
Thanks to toughening EPA standards, in a few years time we'll stop seeing these nonsensical cruising gears, and 6 speeds will become the bare minimum in a transmission.

Thanks man, you helped me learn something lol.

[Dimman]

Geo Metro 1.0L, manual, hatch. Gets same real-world economy as a Prius (C&D test). It's fantastically cheap. And it could probably last long enough until you can buy a FR-S/BRZ. Problem solved.

[ZDan]

Early S2000. Within budget, dead reliable, 30 highway mpg, best freaking mass produced sports car on the market since the 240Z.

Totally disagree with the notion that FWD implies "less things to break".
I've only ever owned rwd, and I've NEVER had a driveshaft, diff, or halfshaft failure. On any reasonably designed rwd car, these components will last an ETERNITY.

In a way, fwd is more complicated! And it sucks.

If not S2000, Miata.

Life is short, don't dd an fwd car.

[suprachica79]

Originally Posted by ZDan

Early S2000. Within budget, dead reliable, 30 highway mpg, best freaking mass produced sports car on the market since the 240Z.

Totally disagree with the notion that FWD implies "less things to break".
I've only ever owned rwd, and I've NEVER had a driveshaft, diff, or halfshaft failure. On any reasonably designed rwd car, these components will last an ETERNITY.

In a way, fwd is more complicated! And it sucks.

If not S2000, Miata.

Life is short, don't dd an fwd car.

Haha, one says no s2000 for multiple reasons, one says yes for opposite reasons lol. Idk what to do guys, honestly, I just drive around my elantra and I hate it for multiple reasons, 1 being that it says that I know nothing about cars and don't care about them, which is obviously not the case. Although if it's between s2000 or Miata, with them being somewhat comparable gas mileage, it's Honda all the way. My first car was an Acura so I do have my Honda love

[BecauseRacecar]

05 and up Hyundai Tiburon V6. If you get the SE model it comes with a 6-speed manual. Fun to drive, looks nice, and is rather cheap. I got mine for 13,600 with only 39k miles on it and its an 06! Beware of the 5-speed models for I heard they have horrible factory clutches that wear out way too fast. The 07-08 models are a little more, but look great and I believe come with climate control