I'm a lifelong car nut; in the past I've leaned towards American performance cars ('68 GTO, '71 Vette, '84 SVO Mustang, '88 Mustang GT, '90 Taurus SHO, '94 Caddy STS); my foreign cars have mostly been Toyotas from the '70s (when there were no performance cars), although a Fiat X 1/9 in college was an interesting diversion.

I've been planning to buy my dream car for close to a year now. I was leaning heavily towards the BMW M5, but after some thought decided I wanted something more "tossable", especially since I already have the "luxury sedan" thing covered with an Acura RL. But I was still aiming for something fast and fun, but Expensive With Which To Impress the Country Club Crowd.

I drove the Z4M Roadster, Porsche Cayman, even a C6 Corvette (which, while fast, was curiously uninvolving. This may have been the fault of the auto tranny-- of the 11 Corvettes the local dealer had, all were autos). The local Mercedes dealer doesn't keep AMGs on the lot, but I don't recall their nimble reflexes ever being mentioned in a review, so it's probably just as well. The local Ford dealer has no Shelbys on the lot, but I did drive a stock Mustang GT (nice car for the money, runs out of breath past 4K RPM though), and they did have one Shelby allocation left that I could exercise for about $60K. I've planned a trip to Irvine, California to visit the new Saleen store and test drive a Saleen 281SC*.

Last Sunday, on a whim, I drove an Evo MR. My worldview has changed. This car is, as they say, awesome beyond all space and time.

I don't care that it's a fraction of the price of the cars I was looking at, and will be looked at askance by the aforementioned country club crowd (FWIW, the counter boy at Kragen thought it was cool. So there). I can feel every pebble in the road and know what the car's doing down to the nearest millimeter. Even the sublime Z4 M Roadster wasn't this good, although it did have an even thicker steering wheel.

I got the "Special Edition" in dark metallic gray. It's a complete flashback for me-- back in the day, Momo wheels, Recaro seats, and Cibié lights were de facto mods for any car I had (trivia: you didn't need a hub adapter to put a Momo in a Corvette). Here it's all done for me. Everything the driver touches, or that "touches the road", is the best componentry available.

The relatively low-rent interior makes the car easy to work on: I've already swapped the gauges and radio, and hardwired in my Valentine One, based on info I found in this forum. Being able to actually do some work on a car, however trivial, means a lot to me. I can't see myself ripping apart the dash of an M5, or even my RL.

I'm not looking for more performance yet, but I can see adding stuff like headers and a cat-back exhaust in the future.

And there may be some cachet to probably being the oldest Evo owner in town-- I'm 50.

Signed, the guy who could have pretty much any freaking car he wanted but went with an Evo.

*I'm still going; already have the tickets, and it'll still be fun.

 

whoa glad to hear you picked the evo over all those car. welcome to the club!

 

Nice congratulations on the evo. It's nice to see people pick these cars when they can have so much more expensive/prestigious. Just shows how great this car really is. This thread makes me appreciate mine just a bit more. Thanks.

 

Why pay all that money for a BMW or Saleen when you have everything you need in $35,000 Evo,and by the way don't feel old im 42 and loving my Evo,plus i have the spare cash now to put what i want on the car,when i want.$30,000 you save with the Evo can buy an awful lot of mod's for your car.Congrat's on your pruchase and welcome to the club.

 

I like how the kool-aid was trademarked.

Enjoy your new purchase. Be good to it!

How is the Cayman?

 

wonderfully put dramsey. you just reiterated what I've told many older and more affluent buyers that were considering this car. welcome.

 

I completely agree. As i say "These days the Evo is somehow more Porsche than Porsche". I too was ready to lay down 70k while shopping for my next car. Here i am with an Evo 9 MR.

 

man...you guys are rich....maybe you could give me a job

 

CONGRATULATIONS! I see that you're in Reno. Come up to Truckee and hang out with a couple of us sometime. I live with two other Evo owners, and am a mechanic at Quality Automotive in Truckee. (I can do your services for you here at the shop. We service a lot of WRXs, STis, and EVOs here) You won't miss the Rally Red 8 and Graphite Grey 9 parked in front of the shop.

 

I've been to the saleen plant and its definatley worthwile. I was there when they were doing "behind the curtain" sneek peeks of the current saleen which was about 2 years ago.

Congrats on the evo, very nice choice. Wait till you decide to modify the car power-wise!!!

 

exactly

 

country club ...

...not my cup of tea

 

Sure. How are your Java/Javascript skills? We might need another coder...

 

THe Cayman was nice. The Evo is much quicker, though. One annoying thing about Porsches is the way they nickel-and-dime you on options. Want a leather interior (other than the seats)? You have to order each item-- dash, console, door panels, steering column, sun visors, etc. separately. It gets really expensive really quick. And why is a performance exhaust an option on a car this expensive?

 

I'll definitely take you up on that!