After driving an NSX for 800 miles on Saturday I believe I finally have some first hand knowledge about how they drive. It's faster than my 993 was or every bit as fast. It's not a GT car - which is what I think the 911 is, but that's another debate. But it does have 4 seats.
The car is a 91 sebring silver with 41 now 42k miles on it. It's got a great interior and exterior and it has nice wheels and Eibach springs. I think the ride is nice but perhaps a bit harsh for street driiving and it's lowered 1" which with the later model valence is too low for speed bumps, steep driveways and conditions like that but it handles very well but when you hit a bump in the road you definintely cringe. It's an awesome car and the view out the windshield is like no other. The Porsche is still nice as far as sitting inside with great visability but the NSX is better.
I really want to speak to some of this modifying stuff and what the does to value. Look on any site or where cars are for sale and Porsches or NSXs or any other nice exotic is going to sell easier and faster all stock and UN modified. In the world of Porsche there are those the modify the car and they never get the prices the stock ones get. Yes I mean turbos or GT2s or cars that are modified to resemble a GT2 or an NSX-R.
Let's just take an NSX-R clone for an example - that will in no way be as valuable as the real thing. It will most likely not even be any more valuable or possibly as valuable as the stock platform fully restored to OEM. You don't have to take my word for it - if you watch the market you'll find I'm right. Very rarely do folks that mod their cars get the value of the mods - rarely. Matter of fact when you do that you have just cut your market share down to such a small group your are going to most likely wait a lonnnnng time to find that "right" buyer and that's for sure.
So unless one of you guys on the list has a personal experience to the contrary then it's conjecture that this mod thing in gonna bring you any big dollars - it won't unless you find just that "right" person - not good odds right now. Most folks that are looking for these cars won't even consider a highly moded car. They'll open the ad and start seeing a list of mods and they'll close the ad and go to the next one. You see to the let's say more conservative owner a moded car means something or sends up a flare - "how was this car driven" like a bat out of hell!!!! Yeah, I want that one, right, when one unmodified is going for less money and if I want I can make my own mods, but at least the indicators are there that the car hasn't been ridden hard and put up wet. That's the way most folks are, not all, but most. You supercharge a car and try and sell it to someone besides you good buddy that knows you and you'll find out real quick how fast it'll sell. If it sells it won't be for what you have in it.
However if you take a car like the one I just bought that has a few mods like a set of comptech headers, which I didn't pay any extra for by the way, and a later model exhaust and wheels 16 and 17s, also didn't pay any extra for that - it was a 91 with 42k miles on it. The miles make the car more valuable, but if I start keeping all the service up to date, replacing the stuff that needs replacing with OEM stuff then I will be improving it's value and may get some of that back if I ever sold it but not for non stock mods!
By the way, I don't give a rats A$$ whether a Subaru or Evo is faster than my car - not one bit - cause guess whose car folks look at in the parking lot with them all parked together - not the WRX or Evo, they'll be wondering what the hell this is - the NSX. They'll look at it and say damn that's cool - don't see many of those! It's not all about speed to most older folks - it's about making sure they're NSX is totally kept up to top notch standards of repair. That keeps the value high, that and low miles but you gotta drive your car or what's the point.
But really what I'm was impressed with other than the fact that all I needed was one or two fingers on the wheel to guide it along the freeway, was how powerful the car is in stock form or almost stock form. It's fast and I don't know where you'd ever test the limits on the street anyway. Unless your tracking where would anyone use all that "impressive" super charged speed? I don't drag race Corvettes or Lambos or Porsches, actually Porsche books tell you that the car isn't meant to be tested so much like that being hard on the tranny and clutch and other expensive parts, so what do you do with all that "extra" power? It's enough for me to look out over those great fenders angled in like some super tech cool car - it's awesome. The car is so far ahead of it's time that it's still modern and mine is now 18 years old. There is nothing still on the market other than those little Lotuses that really is any more modern and nothing is any faster for the price I paid. Unless you want an American muscle car with big V8 straight line power and the last time I checked that's not what sports car owners want with the NSX.
I sure am happy to have one and it looks new and the interior is really nice and the seats didn't start getting a little uncomfy untill I was in the car for 12 hours but that was my butt getting tired not the fault of the car seats. I'm having a mechanic of very high standing, Larry B knows him, work on the car to get it just right. Might as well buy a used one a little cheap cause you'll end up spending some pretty substantial bucks on the car. TB/WP/fluids/axel boots/exp. tank/valves adj./master/slave/clutch/etc.
Don't think that you can just buy an 18 year old car and not have some things to do - be prepared. But once that all gets done - it will be really super ready and I'll have about 33 in the car but it will be really set up.
Anyone have any advice for me on shocks or clutch type?
Thanks guys
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