Meeyatch1 said:
Okay...I never thought I would be typing this email, but I have really been considering selling the NSX and moving on to something else, but I feel very torn about the decision. Here is where I am at.
I have been adding parts to the NSX trying to add to the enjoyment of driving it because for some odd reason I just have not been feeling as excited lately about driving it. I still enjoy it but I fear that the electricity is fading after almost 10 years of NSX ownership. When I drive cars like the Ferrari F355 or F360 I feel like I just got hit with an adrenaline shot. The cars are like rolling art sculptures, and the sound is out of this world. Trying to get that excitement I even added a Taitec exhaust and a Cantrell intake, but it is not working to restart my enthusiasm. Not working.
Heck, even cars like the Porsche 993 Twin Turbo have me excited!! The speed and drivability of the cars and the more hulking looks they have seem to smile and say, 'Okay....lets go kick some serious a$$'. I really do not know why this is happening but it is bothering me since I still feel the NSX is the best car I have ever owned. Can anyone help me? Who else has been in a spot like this, and what did you do?
I am in the minority, the lone dissenting opinion I suppose. If your bored with your NSX, then you don't need to spend more on another higher end vehicle. The same psychological issue would quickly crop up as well with frequent street use. Street driving is boring, and their is no way to buy yourself out of that fact. Not even if you continuously switch & trade between other cars. That just gets expensive for you, and profitable for the state dept of revenue and dealer- just another way to satisfy little more than buyer impulse. Don't fret it, this is a very common auto buyer behavior seen everyday in the upper end sports car market.
IMO, quite likely, you need to spend less on the car and more on enjoying what you already have. Mods do help, but my suggestion would be to change your focus entirely as to how your using the vehicle. The only time you should need to move on to another car is if your underlying application fundamentally changes in which case the NSX might no longer be the best choice.
The very, very, simplified official John@Microsoft way of electing a vehicle:
1)
Pick an application for the vehicle, and stick to it- Daily Driver/beater, Garage Queen Show Car, Street car, Weekend Cruiser, Street/Track car, Weekend Track Rat, Race car, etc... as they are all fundamentally different. If you are not fully qualifying your application up-front (e.g. what you are trying to accomplish by owning the thing) you are flying blind and come off un-informed when you start comparing F430's to a NSXes, which quite frankly I find to be entirely un-comparable vehicles.
2)
Assess any prospective vehicle against real-world criteria for the specified application- social impact, drive-ability, reliability, security, service, parts availability, required performance figures for the intended application, etc... and further decide just how low on the 2D graph of vehicle power to weight to ammenities is complimentary to your lifestyle.
3)
Finally and most critical- Come-up with a realistic go-fast budget, and stick to it- Above and beyond the cost of any prospective vehicle, figure in real world operating & ownership costs which affords one the ability to truly enjoy the platform and extract 100% out of the new vehicle. You want to own the vehicle, not ever have it own you. Sometimes the line is grey.
Mitch, sure the 355 feels like an adrenaline shot- one would expect it to- a 355 engine sounds so sweet, as it should as it costs 4X as much as yours should you need to replace it. I've had one for a brief time, it is entirely un-comparable application-wise to the NSX and no not nearly as flexible a platform. IMO, the 355 is really best at doing exactly what most of the owners do with them- summer time weekend driver used foremost for garnering elevated social status.
Sure, every vehicle has a maintenance cost. It is obvious, and everyone here is some-what advised on the maintenance range for various higher-end sports cars. Most should figure higher thou if they are a driving enthusiast. Maintenance costs are at absolute minimum to include several sets of tires per year, frequent maintenance of all fluids, rotors, brake pads, air cleaners, plugs, filters, shocks, minor modifications, etc... Plus any routine service specific for the platform, etc.. As well as ideally room for a significant mechanical or two... And that's just for a casual weekend driver. Red flags? If your already on one or more occasions have put any NSX maintenance 'off', because the maintenaince & parts costs for an NSX and F-Car a literally a
world apart.
However, even forgeting all that for just a moment- and start talking now about the real world ownership cost of the platform. Don Kitch explains this to driving enthusiasts at his driver school all the time, as he also commonly sees enthusiasts woefully under-estimate real world TCO (total cost of ownership) as they balk at the cost to rent Lotus Elise’s for the day at $700 a pop...
Why? Well... because, come on... what is the point of owning a high performance vehicle and not getting the most out of it? You spent 3X as much for the slight bit of added performance say, the GT40, 911TT, or Gallardo offers over the bland underpowered NSX you say... so does that not make such a discussion very relevant – I think it does? Is this not a good test to determine if your making a car buying decision for the right technical reasons or to just satisfy that urge to experience something new and cool?
Usually, if you really start adding it all up- and figure in monthly event costs, fuel, lodging, food, track fees, tools, modifications, even shipping costs for parts, and all of a sudden the TCO numbers look very different and will change your impression on what is or is not truely realistic.
So many members on so many forums will say "hey go spend big on this higher end exotic performance car" spinning it as being the catch all solution to finding driving nirvana and happiness, but it's not. Especially exotics, that just really horrible advice; just because the NSX may be considered an exotic technically, does not some how mean the ownership experience is in anyway comparable to other modern high end exotics.
Owning a Gallardo then having it parked because you can't afford to properly maintain and drive it, even on a mostly street driven application, or to replace the motor in the event of a failure is really being short sighted. For most owners whom press the envelope without the commercial motor sports racing budgets and the truck, trailer, and tools to back it up will always be operating one step away from disaster. Even worse, if you like tracking your cars, then showing up at a track event in your $150,000 Ford GT-40 and then getting lapped by an Elise, which is what almost always happens as they never get enough seat time or are otherwise incapable of pushing the limits due to the fiscal operating consequnces.
As a general rule, I have found that the happiest motor sports enthusiasts are the ones that get the most out of their vehicles for their target application. Attending track events, taking long trips, attending club events, etc... on a frequent basis and I know any number of guys that could easily afford an F-Car but instead have a garage full of MX-5’s or S2000's or an NSX because they have a fundamental understanding of what ownership costs really mean from years of experience with other cars.
In short, think your bored with the NSX now? Take some recommendations from forum members that the best thing to do is to spend 3X as much on the car instead of spending 3X as much on enjoying it. How boring will it be to have to curtail a driving event because you had to just pay $725 for a fluids change at your local Ferrari dealer, or waiting 6 months for parts from the ware house in Italy. Their is a lot more boring things that the sound of a Taitec exhaust.
Why are all the F-Cars parked? Why very few Gallardo sightings per year at local track events? The far few that do drive them hard seem to be very rare exceptions. Likely, it's not because they are not reliable. The exotics do have higher maintenance costs to correspond to their higher performance & platform costs. Again, with a few exceptions, I would say it is safe to say that the vast majority of the owners have enough to pay the buck and half for them or to find a way to float a lease on them, but then can usually only afford to only do just that- garage them or street pimp occasionally with them. They cannot afford to properly drive them and maintain them the way they wish they could. Nor do many have the desire to. Most owners worry about re-sale value, their paint finish, rock chips & dirt, weather, milage, brake dust on their wheels, having to park it over-night in an unsecured parking spot at a hotel, etc... almost every day they own it. That's a bad sign for those new prospective owners just now coming to the table.
If your thinking about a vehicle in a context that is more driver-centric around race tracks... then up it even more... as the added ownership costs can very frequently be higher by a margin of 2-3X if not more than the base cost of any vehicle your looking at. Any vehicle that is tracked often (e.g. 15+ events per year) or raced in a sanctioned series (which aside from costing about 5X more to upkeep and maintain competitively), always know that you may well have to consider replacing the vehicle entirely out of pocket at some point no fault of your own as it is essentially an un-insurable liability.
....still waiting for dem b@stards to email me back..who new trying to give a dealership alotta money was so hard
