Mitsubishi cut itself off at the knees well before Daimler entered the picture. A 20-year coverup of widespread manufacturing defects is Exhibit A. An attempt to bolster tumbling sales by seeking out subprime customers instead of solving its quality issues is Exhibit B. Plus there were lawsuits after lawsuits,…

That’s my pick, too, now that the Golf is gone. The Soul is even cheaper, I think, with 6-speed and the 2-liter four, but it doesn’t do much for me. The Impreza is always quite rough around the edges and the Elantra GT is gone. Civic, Mazda3, et al is pricier. There’s not much else out there that’s not a CUV.

The days of new low $20K GTIs are long since gone...and they will not be back. Hell, the days of low $20K VWs period is probably gone thanks to the deletion of the regular Golf. Maybe a Jetta will still be cheap?

The Soul is the new Honda Fit... 6-speed manual for under $20K and a larger engine to boot.

You could also get the Z26 with the Quad4 engine. Probably only for 1-2 model years though.

It belongs in a museum.

The main pull for me is that F136 engine. It’s going to be hard to find another dry-sump V8 for so little money, and even though it’s not a flatplane crank the 2001-2007 Maser coupes just beg to be converted to track rats.

Also an evaluation of the cam variator. Though I’ll bet at this point it has been replaced at least once, along with the clutch and fuel pump. Maintenance records would be extremely helpful to the buyer.

Torch could probably use one of kits that give you sandpaper, polish, and a quartz coating. But it’s a little time consuming, fussy, and better with power polishers. If he wants to treat all the lights it might better to outsource.

Because I bet Pao taillights are not easy to come by, I’ll recommend you find a shop to restore the UV coating. Chances are what UV protection was there before the DEET damage was already mostly gone. But now there’s none.

My father looked at these and went straight to the MX-5. He did really like the looks but he didn’t trust the top to last very long. Interesting that it was the best-engineered part of the car.

I believe there are about half as many non-GXP coupes out there as there are turbos.

GM had a waiting list of 10K customers for the coupe and only about 1,250 were made before the big day (bankruptcy). Still, 1,250 coupes makes it highly unlikely that most of them went to GM management, especially since a few hundred were destined for Canada and Mexico. More likely demand way outstripped supply.

Yeah I see the connector for lights to it probably would have been a trailer for bulky stuff.

I call shenanigans on roomier cabin, too. The NC Miata felt roomier than the GM.

That’s a 1.25-inch Class II hitch. Good for 150 to 300 pounds tongue weight. So theoretically you could carry around an extra set of wheels but more likely this was for a bike rack or a luggage extender, which is useful on a Solstice bc of how little trunk space there is when the top is down.

Ha! Correct. Depending on the trim they might even be closer to 400 lbs apart. I probably had a bad number; the TourX was pretty new.

The great thing about the 7-passenger is the discount, and there’s some nice value in having less things to go wrong as compared to a syncro, westy, etc. But the rust on this one is big red flag for an LA van and I really dislike what’s been done with the bumpers and the door cards. I love the gowesty upgrade but the…

A T2 is in a whole different category of slowness and crudeness compared to a Vanagon (unless that Vanagon is a diesel). And this Vanagon, with some useful power from the upgrade and a new trans, will scoot down the road nicely. And the ride quality on Vanagons is typically fantastic.

It’s cool that you picked up on that. I did a little research and found that this car, the 1004/1204, was based on the chassis of the Glas Isar, aka Goggomobil T600, which had the motor installed well ahead of the front axle to maximize interior space. The layout made much more sense when I learned that the Isar used…