Totally with you on that... I spend many days in my classics and ponder the safety of it all. My kids already have their eyes on them, and I can’t help wondering at the wisdom of letting them loose.

Crack pipe... wrong bumpers, rust, beat paint? You could get two NAs for that, one for street and one for track.

Good argument and rebuttal. There’s definitely a disconnect between enthusiasts and new-car buyers.

Spoken like a guy who spends a lot of time on the internet.

It’d be soooo nice if the mechanical LSD was included... though un-tuned, one-wheel-drive ain’t so bad. Tuned (over 300#) it’s kind of a pain. Probably my last FWD car without a real LSD.

Same here... but we’ve all seen cars that a dukie or two wouldn’t really make much of an impact on the interior decor.

If it were a two-door, nice price, maybe. If it were a 65-69 two door, for sure nice price. Just not seeing it here...

Having tested one of these a couple years ago, and found its price (once equipped with the Recaros) to be into GTI territory, I’m still not too bummed about going with a seriously used Mk6 GTI instead.

I dunno, I’m kind of on the other side... bearing in mind my experience is with one car (a Mk6 GTI), it’s been fine. I think they may have fallen into cheapening the build (aka MBZ post W123, BMW post E39) at some point, but I really have zero complaints.

Well, to be fair, one’s clever, original, and pithy, the other is a copypasta wall of text.

So they put the interior of a Focus into a GTI? Okay, I guess.

Euro hood height regulation. Easy. Now all cars look like bloated blobs.

Damn your eyes, here I am trying to bond with my hostile teenage kid, and here’s this crap.

Good Jalop, Jason, enjoyed as always!!

Another vote for the GTI - it’s a grownup’s hot hatch, especially with a tune.

Excellent article!! I’ve had 240Z’s since 1992 or so, and this is the first I’ve heard of Mr. Matsuo. I don’t drive my Z much (hotrod mods from my youth aren’t so much fun in my 40's), but am always taken aback by the low floor. Interesting to learn the backstory of that piece.

Definitely a different marketplace, no question. But a 30K 510? Yikes.

Wonderful article, great to get inside info.

Point taken, but!

While I idled through high school in a big block ‘70 Charger that I was parentally-prohibited from modifying (and even driving after I slid it sideways into a pole), my buddy had a couple of these.