Hypothetically, which car would you rather buy?
Asked by
tedd (
14078
)
August 16th, 2011
It has always been a long term goal/dream of mine to purchase a sports car and spend the next 10–20 years doing work on it. I’m from a car family (like, car designers) so its in the blood, and I’ve worked with/on cars for a long time (though not so much recently).
For the longest time my plan was to purchase a Toyota Supra (a 93–98 model) that was in rough condition, and over the course of a lot of years dump $50–60k and a lot of man hours into to make it into an incredibly nice/fast car. On the pro side, a lot of people like to upgrade these cars and they made a bunch of them (relative to most sports cars), so parts and such would be no problem to come by. They can be upgraded to the point where they will easily outrun even the fastest imports (Ferrari, etc), but that would take a ton of work and wouldn’t be a realized dream for a minimum of a decade.
Another thought of mine has been this. A used Dodge Viper (from the mid 90’s to the early 2000’s) would really only cost in the $30k range (the Supra would cost between 20–30k). There are a lot of Vipers out there with less than 50,000 miles in pretty good condition, ready to be sold for that price range. The catch to a viper, is that you can’t really do a whole lot to upgrade it. There aren’t a ton of upgrades done to the cars because as it was put to me “it’s already a Viper.” The only way I could make it faster than the maximum incarnate of the Supra, would be to do MAJOR re-manufacturing on the engine block and attaching a very costly custom built twin turbo charger to it. The cost would very easily get me into the hundreds of thousands of dollars and seems incredibly unlikely that I will ever have that kind of money to dump into a hobby.
Given the choices which would you rather do. Keeping fully in mind that this is entirely hypothetical, as until my student loans are gone neither car is plausible. Would you take the slower out of the box Supra, that would require a lot of work but could become a lot faster, or would you take the fast out of the box Viper, that lacks the upgradeability?
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10 Answers
The Viper. It’s prettier.:)
Personally I’d do the Toyota (blech!) because, well, I like putting in the hours to make it an awesome car, doing that now with my 66 Mustang.
The Toyota.
Because it is not american.
@ragingloli That is the most incredibly ignorant answer I’ve ever heard.
What do you want from the car? Are you going to race it? Then you want the Supra. Do you want a car to work on? You want the Supra. Do you want a long term hobby? Supra.
Do you want a more short term project? You want the Viper. Do you want cool-looking car? Viper. Do you want a chick-magnet? Viper.
I’m sure you have other things you want, but that’s how I’d look at it. I’d say the Supra offers more opportunities for fun, but the viper is probably a better chick magnet.
Chevelle . . . way cheaper than the Viper, and with the same sweat blood and tears you will have a much more unique and bad ass car worthy of rubbernecking and even car shows. And unlike a Soop or a Viper, it will steadily increase in value as the years pass . . .
But if I HAVE to choose one of your (eh), then I’d go with the Soop.
I know of a ‘72 Datsun that has twice the torque of a stock Viper, a 0–60 time of 1.8 seconds, is totally street-legal, and could be replicated for under $30k. The White Zombie is another on the long list of reasons that the Viper doesn’t impress me.
As @wundayatta implies, part of the decision also depends on whether or not you are capable of getting laid without a car that people will look at and automatically “know” that you are rich. Who cares is the Supra actually cost more; the price tag isn’t visible whereas the Viper says, “Hey, ladies! I can spend over $100,000 on a toy!”, and that is what many are attracted to.
The older Supras are nice, but not quite my style. While I love Toyotas for normal use, when it comes to sports cars, I am more of a Nissan guy. I’ve always like the lines of the later (Z32 chassis) 300ZX, which isn’t exactly a slouch in the performance category. Of course, my preference would be to try to get an R32 or R34 Skyline to be street-legal in the US. Used R32s are actually quite inexpensive.. but the paperwork is another matter entirely.
Dodge Viper. Because it’s already a Viper.
NSX! Oh wait…
Yeah, Viper.
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