How satisfied are you with your FR-S/BRZ?

[Tcoat]

Originally Posted by soulreapersteve

Heh, saw that post minutes after he posted it this morning. Wanted to reply, especially to the auto dimming mirror and factory tires point but wouldn't have been so civil about it so I stopped myself.

A new car loses what... 10% of what it's worth right after you leave the lot?

Ha Ha Ha You think that was the first draft?
Well explained below. Also have to keep in mind that the depreciation values are retail prices. In reality trade in values will be even less (dealer's need to make a living as well) and should not be considered part of the depreciated value.





http://www.edmunds.com/car-buying/ho...fographic.html

[JTOFJPN]

7/10

I'm at the crossroads of doing a 20k engine swap or selling it and buying a R35.

Sigh.

[chaoskaze]

Originally Posted by JTOFJPN

7/10

I'm at the crossroads of doing a 20k engine swap or selling it and buying a R35.

Sigh.

Why didn't you get a GTR @ first place? O.O

That's not something you cross shop.


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[Quentin]

I would get the R35 if it were my money. You'll just piss away a lot of money trying to make the FR-S something else.

Funny thing about depreciation, I can see the twins very much being a low depreciation vehicle in the long term. In 15 years, clean, low mileage examples will fetch a premium, IMO. 1) the car is generally pretty simple. It won't have a super outdated interface like you see when you use a Tom Tom from 2006. 2) clean ones will be rare. Very rare. 3) You simply won't be able to buy anything like it in 15 years. Everything will have electrification of some sort. Manual transmissions will be dead. Current cars with turbos will run like crap in 15 years while our cars will feel pretty fresh in comparison. Right now, yup, they are depreciation queens. They will be desirable and people will have nostalgia in the future, though. Simple, honest, gimmick free cars that are fun to drive won't be around much longer.


Sent from Tandy 400

[Packofcrows]

8/10 now. Why? Driving is blast. -1 because dealer is lagging on repairs quick and the techies scratch car each time they look in it seems+small non-important issues like loose dead/resting pedal. I care ok? To me $25k is what $2.5m is to you.

-1 because of lack of lip and fog lights from factory.

Yep... lol it matters to me.

[Corn_Bread]

I payed 23k for mine. It did have 17k miles on it, but also came with a set of Enkai PF01s and Super Sports. The thing handles incredibly, but I'm not sure if I should have payed that much. I use it as a commuter, but feel like I'm not taking full advantage of the car if I'm not modding it and autox. I am considering trading it in for a more practical car, yet still fun to drive.

[JTOFJPN]

Originally Posted by chaoskaze

Why didn't you get a GTR @ first place? O.O

That's not something you cross shop.


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Originally Posted by Quentin

I would get the R35 if it were my money. You'll just piss away a lot of money trying to make the FR-S something else.

Sent from Tandy 400

I bought my FR-S 2 years ago, and financially am in a position now to make the decision between spending the next 1-2 years swapping the FR-S with a big money 2J/LS3 or letting go and buying a R35.

It's something I didn't think I'd come across for another 3-4 years. But it's the dream car and its within the scope now.

Decisions decisions.

I agree, the FR-S will become something it's not sooner or later if I keep it.

[chaoskaze]

Originally Posted by JTOFJPN

I bought my FR-S 2 years ago, and financially am in a position now to make the decision between spending the next 1-2 years swapping the FR-S with a big money 2J/LS3 or letting go and buying a R35.

It's something I didn't think I'd come across for another 3-4 years. But it's the dream car and its within the scope now.

Decisions decisions.

I agree, the FR-S will become something it's not sooner or later if I keep it.

I would say Get GTR, FRS is a good platform in a sense but compare to GTR? Maybe if you make it a dedicate track only car & have all the fun you want. In other regards it will always fall short compare to it.

Or you can wait till Supra is out.

[serialk11r]

Oh, I just realized I haven't written here since I actually bought one of these!

I'll give it a 7/10, primarily because it turned out to be much better at carrying passengers than I thought it would be. I've fit 4 adults in it with only a bit of discomfort, and I've been able to move pretty large items.

Pros:
-Super practical, holy crap
-Steering is pretty good
-Seats are quite good
-Freeway gas mileage is great
-Overall pretty quiet, comfortable car

Cons:
-Gearbox makes horrendous rattling sound below 2000rpm
-Something in the trunk rattles a little
-Door switches rattle like crazy with vibrations and bass from speakers
-Other parts of the drivetrain make really disturbing clunky sounds
-Scion head unit is horrible
-Engine sounds horrible, a Corolla with a slightly louder exhaust sounds better
-Clutch is a little weird
-Rear end is ugly, but I sort of fixed that with Valenti lights
-You might as well not turn on the low beams since they're not much brighter than DRLs. I replaced with LEDs that are a tiny bit better. I don't like the halogen DRLs, they look ugly.
Stuff that I don't like but maybe isn't fair to criticize the car for:
-Flywheel is way too heavy, yea this can be swapped out
-Rear traction is shit. My MR2 on all seasons was way better. Not really fair since the front/rear weight distribution was flipped around.
-It's not really fair to call this a problem since I don't actually need more speed, but it doesn't accelerate very quickly. More importantly, it doesn't sound cool while you try.
-Difficult to replace dual filament incandescent front signal lights

To me this is like a cooler Civic coupe that happens to be RWD and thus has better "racing" credentials or something like that. With Uber pool making stuff cheaper and all these ride sharing/car renting services, I feel like the practicality of having 4 seats isn't really as useful as I thought when everyone else's car can hold the passengers and I carry passengers just to make a point of using the rear seats. Itching to get a "real" sports car to replace this but I don't like anything on the market.

[Tcoat]

Oh I wish Trom was still around. He would be having a blast right now.

I can clearly hear him in my head:
"What the **** did you *****s think you were ***** buying? It is a ***** ****** ****** great car you ***** ***** ******* *** ***** *********.
Stop ************* and ****** drive it."

Ummmm I guess in hindsight that is why he isn't here.

[Gear_One_Performance]

We've got two here at the shop. The race car and one of the owners street cars and honestly we couldn't be happier with them. The flip side of that is we all had tons of experience with the platform before buying either one so there weren't any surprises or disappointments.

[strat61caster]

Originally Posted by chaoskaze

Why didn't you get a GTR @ first place? O.O

That's not something you cross shop.


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Originally Posted by Quentin

I would get the R35 if it were my money. You'll just piss away a lot of money trying to make the FR-S something else.

Funny thing about depreciation, I can see the twins very much being a low depreciation vehicle in the long term. In 15 years, clean, low mileage examples will fetch a premium, IMO. 1) the car is generally pretty simple. It won't have a super outdated interface like you see when you use a Tom Tom from 2006. 2) clean ones will be rare. Very rare. 3) You simply won't be able to buy anything like it in 15 years. Everything will have electrification of some sort. Manual transmissions will be dead. Current cars with turbos will run like crap in 15 years while our cars will feel pretty fresh in comparison. Right now, yup, they are depreciation queens. They will be desirable and people will have nostalgia in the future, though. Simple, honest, gimmick free cars that are fun to drive won't be around much longer.

For the R35, here's a CSG post about how much it costs to track one if you are running at 10/10ths and do the maintenance by the book:

http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showp...1&postcount=20

Triple my take home pay (I own my FR-S outright in less than 3 years and am staying afloat in SF) and I'll still stick with the FR-S. You can operate a real racecar for the kind of money a GTR consumes as a 'toy'. Sure maybe you never track or autox it and it consumes brakes, tires and fluids at the same rate or less than I consume them on my FR-S, they still cost 2x-3x as much at the same intervals.

Edit: Given how well the FA20 takes boost, with 4x CARB legal FI kits on the market I haven't seen a single CARB kit fail (that couldn't have failed similarly if at stock power, i.e. broken axles due to lowering) the 86 is a pretty heavy hitter for a <$50k budget at ~240whp (~300 crank hp) and ~2,800 lbs you're at roughly a 10lbs/hp ratio, that's like Muscle car status with much better agility. I'd bet that's a much faster car than 99.9% of people can truly utilize, sure that's a $15k check to drop if you do everything currently accepted as needed but you're still well under GTR running costs even assuming the worst.

As for the depreciation I agree, I think we'll see a leveling off in the $17k-$12k region (in fact I think we're already starting to see that, sub $20k became the norm recently for first year cars but it's not falling noticeably over the past year), they will stay there for quite a few years unless the 2nd gen makes them obsolete (big improvements, same price) or a severe failure mode appears, check out used RSX, MX-5, S2k and Mk2 RX-8 prices, they've been very stable for the last ~5 years because demand is pretty consistent and supply is low, conversely early Mk1 RX-8's are dirt cheap because they had a severe reliability problem, one that was fixed on the second generation.

I remember shopping for RSX's as my first car 5 years ago, looking today they're pretty much in the same ballpark. And it's both cool and disheartening to watch NA Miata prices climb as they surpass the 25 year mark, I think that desirable mass produced cars experience a 50 year curve with rock bottom happening at about 25 years and break-even (inflation adjusted) happens at ~50 years. (see 911, Mustang, Alfa Romeos, RX-7 is a good example of a car at the ~30-35 year mark, average nice examples are worth equivalent dollars to their purchase price at $10k [FB anyway])

I think we'll see nice 86's under $10k at some point (or it's inflation adjusted equivalent), but that's probably about 10-15 years from now in contradiction to @Tcoat infographic, but the 86 is a bit more special than your average $30k car.

[Tcoat]

Originally Posted by strat61caster

As for the depreciation I agree, I think we'll see a leveling off in the $17k-$12k region (in fact I think we're already starting to see that, sub $20k became the norm recently for first year cars but it's not falling noticeably over the past year), they will stay there for quite a few years unless the 2nd gen makes them obsolete (big improvements, same price) or a severe failure mode appears

You missed a potential variable. If the second gen turns out to be a turd on wheels the value of the first gen could shoot up in a hurry. If it does go up it will stay there.

Yes the info graphic is very basic and looks only at the "average car" but the point was that all cars depreciate substantially right off the top. How they recover from that in the long run can vary by a massive margin.

[strat61caster]

Originally Posted by Tcoat

You missed a potential variable. If the second gen turns out to be a turd on wheels the value of the first gen could shoot up in a hurry. If it does go up it will stay there.

Yes the info graphic is very basic and looks only at the "average car" but the point was that all cars depreciate substantially right off the top. How they recover from that in the long run can vary by a massive margin.

And along with that: if there is no 2nd generation at all...