carmudgeons.com  

Go Back   carmudgeons.com > Automotive Forums > Car Talk > Perseverators Anonymous

 
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Prev Previous Post   Next Post Next
Old 07-12-2017, 01:33 PM   #1
John V
No more BMWs
 
John V's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2005
Carmudgeonly Ride: Ram, MS3, CX-5, RX-8
Location: Glenwood, MD
Posts: 14,753
What to do with the Mazdaspeed?

Our fleet is pretty satisfactorily full right now. Marisa is enjoying the CX-5 (and I'm learning to be OK with it... though I still hate the transmission). The truck is effing awesome. The Boxster is, well, it's a Boxster. I love it. And the race car is doing what it should do. My Silverado is gone to its new owner, who is enjoying it.

So where does that leave the Mazdaspeed? Our original plans were to sell it once I had time to clean it up. I did that a couple of weekends ago, and have been commuting in it on days that are too hot or too rainy or otherwise crappy for taking a two-seat convertible that I try to keep in nice shape. And... I kind of like it. It gets reasonably good fuel economy, is peppy, has really good A/C and has a ton of space. It's got great seats. It handles pretty well. It's fast enough to be entertaining. And I already have winter tires for it.

The other thing is that I don't think it's worth much. Retail blue book value is something like $4k on it. I can't see parting with it for $4k, or even $5k. Maybe not even $6k. I'm not sure what they reasonably sell for. Ones that are in not nearly as nice of shape as ours have been listed for $7k on autotrader, but that's asking price. I don't know what they realistically trade hands for in this condition.

The car is really nice (paint and interior are like new.. it's been garage kept and well detailed and it got a new windscreen last year) but it does have 180k on it. It will need a clutch soon. It really should get the timing chain tensioner and guides replaced (common problem with these engines). And it has a light clunk and a little on-center vagueness in the front end that I suspect is tie rod ends but could be ball joints. So, doing all the work myself, about $1k in parts and a solid weekend's worth of work to do.

Options:

1) Sell it, and do what I did last year which is drive the truck on really nasty winter days and drive the Boxster as much as I can during the winter (last winter was very mild ... I drove it a lot). The money would just go into investments.
2) Keep it, fix the issues, and use it as a winter beater and crappy-weather daily driver.

I was going to include another option: Keep it and don't fix any of the issues, just drive it until it stops running. But I know myself, and I can't / won't do that.

So what say ye?
John V is offline   Reply With Quote
 

Bookmarks

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
VW GTI vs Mazdaspeed 3 ed328ci Car Talk 10 06-12-2007 08:50 PM
Mazdaspeed 3=not sane JST Car Talk 8 02-15-2006 11:44 AM
preview of new Mazdaspeed MX5. lemming Car Talk 7 01-31-2006 10:08 PM
mazdaspeed Rx8 really soon? lemming Car Talk 0 09-25-2004 10:42 PM
Mazdaspeed MX-5 Roadstergal Car Talk 7 04-29-2004 05:16 PM


All times are GMT -4. The time now is 04:12 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.7.1
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Forums © 2003-2008, 'Mudgeon Enterprises - Site hosting by AYN & Associates, LLC