The old Z4 looked great, and it’s looks fit the car.

Where are you seeing a GT for $27k? Their MSRP is $35k. The four cylinder starts at $26k.  That’s in the same neighborhood as a BRZ, the V8 is not.

At least your school has enough people to have one.  With only 1,300 students, many of which were locals, we didn’t have any organized clubs at all. (This was ten years ago or so, if that’s somehow relevant).

Any trim on the BRZ/86 aside from the base trim is the wrong one.

We’ll be able to import the speed six in 2024, Cerberas in 2021.  I’ll probably still be scared off by reliability and nonexistent parts, but I can dream.

TVRs were reasonably affordable, though.  This is definitely not. (Though it probably doesn’t have quite as poor build quality, either).

... I can relate.  I pulled into the dealer I bought my Toyota 86 from in my ‘79 RX-7 (my daily had been totaled).  The salesmen practically ran away from me.

The worry I always have about a PPI is that the car will be sold out from under me.

While that’s what I’ve been trying to do, for older cars that are rare on dealer’s lots, it’s very hard to find both a halfway decent car and a dealer willing to let you test drive it.

I consider 30 about the point where you might need something a tad more practical than a Miata with no top, and buy a hatchback. Not the point where you replace a hatchback with a Buick.

Depending on how rare the seats are, you can probably have an upholstery shop redo them to like or better than new condition for less than the cost of replacing them. Most shops like that can also redo interior pieces for waaay less than trying to source NOS replacements, and they like repeat business.

If only such cars existed in Ohio.  They salt the roads here.

While you can always repaint the car, in many cases it’s cheaper to buy (the same) car that doesn’t need paint than to repaint the one you have.

An eight year old in a car seat? That’s insane.  I would’ve absolutely hated that as a kid.

How long do they require car seats for now?

You want an RX-7, right? You could almost certainly buy a running RX-7 for what you’d get for a project Mustang. Might even be able to find someone willing to make that trade.

This terrifying little thing is actually on my local Craigslist right now:

Look at the Carfax.  He didn’t even preserve the thing very well, this guy is the fourth owner.

For all his efforts to preserve it, the mileage isn’t even all that low by collectors standards. There are two (admittedly non-ACR) SRT-4 Neons with less miles on Autotrader right now, both under $25k.

It’s kind of old-fashioned now, but specific car forums are still a decent place to sell unusual or rare cars. You won’t get nearly as much visibility, but the ad is usually free, and the people that do see it usually have a decent idea of what they’d be getting themselves into.