Suggest me a future beater

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Barracuda

Barracuda

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Boss-Barracuda
As you probably know my 740 is a big hunk of crap. Eventually I'm going to make it look and run decent and sell it as quickly as I can to some other unfortunate soul, but after that I'll need another beater to get to college. I've talked to my mom and she said if things get better she'll help me pay for a much nicer beater that will actually run correctly, but I'm having trouble figuring out what would be the best choice. This probably isn't going to happen for a long while so there's plenty of time to figure it out, but it would still be nice to have a car in mind.

Criteria:
RWD, AWD, or 4WD
Semi decent gas mileage, preferably 20-25+
Somewhat reliable, no major potential issues
Somewhere in the range of $3,000-$5,000

The price isn't set in stone because it'll depend on many factors, but I'm aiming high. If all goes to plan I'm hoping to get at least $2,000 (after a lot of work of course) for the Volvo, but with a cracked dash I'm not sure how possible that will be.

What I'm thinking so far:
Pretty much any 95-98 Subaru
Old Volkswagen Beetle

Love the looks, awd, good gas mileage, and somewhat cheap (although pretty rare in Florida, I could find a billion for cheap in NH). The legacy wagon and outback seem to be a bit too costly, and I'm not all that enthused about the potential head gasket issue so I'm thinking that's not the best idea.

As for the Beetles they are abundant in Florida, very high gas mileage, easy as hell to work on, and parts are cheap. No room or comfort, but I can deal with that.

So what are your suggestions, because I pretty much have no idea.
 
I'd look for a later Beetle with a 1600 Dual Port and IRS instead of swing-axle. Avoid the Super, though. Strut towers in a car designed in the '30s = bad, bad, bad flex.
 
Yeah, my friends grey beetle is a super and we learned that fact all too well. He bought it to make a baja out of it until he read more and found out you can't make a super into a baja without making a whole new front end for it.

A karmann ghia would be nice but something about it makes me think the engine would melt like a corvair in the hot Florida sun.

The beetle is more of a back up plan if there's nothing else out there. I like them, but I'm not so enthused about the lack of power. An Impreza RS, Legacy, or Forester would be my main choice in the perfect world, something I can take down a dirt road and have a hell of a time with, but for all that money I don't want to end up with another POS. Anyone know anything about them, flaws, strengths, etc.

Still open for ideas though.
 
Just some random vehicles that popped into my head:

  • Ford Mustang LX <--> Pontiac Firebird V6*
  • Toyota Cressida
  • Honda CR-V <--> Toyota RAV4
  • Ford Panther <--> GM B-Body
  • Ford Ranger <--> Chevrolet S-10**

* In regards to the V6 Firebird, I can tell you that they're unreasonably cheap and fairly bulletproof. My brother picked up his '91 Firebird V6 for $1600, has 155K on the clock, and has only had some minor issues since he picked it up. Since everything is shared not just with the Camaro, but also with a lot of the pickups, sedans and SUVs, parts are easy to find - and they're dirt cheap. Plus... You can easily do all the work in your driveway. That's been a big plus for us so far.

** The Ford Ranger. Its one of those vehicles that just won't die. You can pick up a 2000 Ranger for less than $4000 these days, and that's absolutely crazy. The 2.4L four-cylinder models, with a stick, apparently average 23 MPG. How on Earth that happens, I don't know. Hell, I'm half tempted to go look for a used one. Just to throw my crap in the back and do whatever.
 
Heres my obligatory suggestion of a mark3 gti or jetta with a vr6. Fits in price range and is loads of fun, has great cult following and has personality.
 
The S-10 is a good choice, they will not go wrong and even if they do they are cheap to fix. For $3-$5K you can get one in really good shape and probably even with 4WD, although that will pretty much kill the fuel economy on it. A 2WD, with ZQ8 suspension and a 4.3L V6 would make for a decent vehicle. The 2.2L I4 though is pretty much worthless and you have to rev the nuts off of it to really go anywhere.

Why no FWD though? You could easily get a Focus in really good shape and they are fairly fun to drive. For $5,000 you could probably even get an SVT one.
 
Just about anything with the GM 3.8 liter or one of the revolting Ford Taurii will be cheap and run forever.

You won't get any style points. And stuff will probably start to rattle, squeek and fall of the car with daily use and typical male college student maintenance.
 
Joey D
The 2.2L I4 though is pretty much worthless and you have to rev the nuts off of it to really go anywhere.
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Word. Go for the Ford Ranger if you want to do the four-pot dance. Or the Mazda B-series truck. Holy hell those things are cheap. There are a couple of 2002/2003 versions of them around here for less than $3000 with only 130K on the clock. Crazy.
 
How about a Datsun? Not sure how common they are in FL, but my family has 2 510s (I drive 1), and a 620 pickup truck. My 510 is good, gets about 25-30 MPG. got it for 2500, put a couple grand in it. I have seen good ones for about 5-7k.
 
I'll have to update the criteria. It needs to have comfortable room for three, I would consider a miata otherwise, and it needs to have enough power to have fun with. I guess beater isn't the right word for it. I do need it to get me from A to B, but without the barracuda on the road I also want to be able to have fun with it every now and then.

Joey D
Why no FWD though? You could easily get a Focus in really good shape and they are fairly fun to drive. For $5,000 you could probably even get an SVT one.
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Why no FWD, because I hate FWD with every single fiber of my body. There are plenty of disadvantages and zero advantages to having a FWD over a RWD in a state where 80% of the time it's hot as hell, fun being the main one. The 5k is really optimistic, life doesn't like me that much.

Thanks for the suggestions but to be honest I'm not a big fan of any of them :lol: Currently it looks like a Subaru Forester is in the lead. Saw a 99 on craigslist with a 5 speed for $2,800, whereas the lowest impreza I've seen was $4,000 for a 98 RS.
 
:rolleyes: Excellent more elitist bull about FWD. Good luck in your car search.
 
Joey D
:rolleyes: Excellent more elitist bull about FWD. Good luck in your car search.
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Give me one advantage to having a FWD in a state where it never snows, I'd love to hear it.

It all comes down to personal preference, and for what I want my car to be able to do a FWD is completely useless.
 
Diablo'
Give me one advantage to having a FWD in a state where it never snows, I'd love to hear it.

It all comes down to personal preference, and for what I want my car to be able to do a FWD is completely useless.
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They are fun. Sure things like a Buick Century aren't going to be fun but a Focus hatchback is, even more so if it's an SVT.

It's one this to say that you just prefer to have a RWD because you like them more or whatever, it's another to say rather daft comments like FWD cars aren't fun. I can give you a whole list of FWD cars that are very fun to drive and are affordable. Best example off I can give other then the Focus is a Neon ACR. Dirt cheap and fun as hell to drive.

I'm really trying to figure out what a FWD car can't do that a RWD can when it comes to what you are looking for (based on your posts of course). You want a beater to get you around, with decent gas mileage and be reliable. Nothing in that criteria has anything to do with drivetrain.
 
Joey D
They are fun. Sure things like a Buick Century aren't going to be fun but a Focus hatchback is, even more so if it's an SVT.

It's one this to say that you just prefer to have a RWD because you like them more or whatever, it's another to say rather daft comments like FWD cars aren't fun. I can give you a whole list of FWD cars that are very fun to drive and are affordable. Best example off I can give other then the Focus is a Neon ACR. Dirt cheap and fun as hell to drive.

I'm really trying to figure out what a FWD car can't do that a RWD can when it comes to what you are looking for (based on your posts of course). You want a beater to get you around, with decent gas mileage and be reliable. Nothing in that criteria has anything to do with drivetrain.
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FWD cars aren't as fun then. I just think they're a waste of potential for lower costs, at least a good portion of them seem that way. Say you could have had your mini in your choice of FWD, RWD, or AWD all for the same price, I'm 100% certian you wouldn't pick FWD. The only time I've ever had fun while driving a FWD was when my friend let me drive his 05 civic in a dirt lot and I was running it as hard as I possibly could. Driving my cousins saab 9000 (I think that's what it was) was pretty fun too, but it had major torque steer and would have much more potential if it was RWD.

Like I said, I'd like to be able to have that criteria with the ability to still have some fun with it, but I guess I never specified what I meant by fun. My definition of having fun in a car is powersliding, doing proper donuts, going down a muddy dirt road or two from time to time, and getting as close to the limit as I can around the twisties. The last two you can do in a FWD, but on the dirt road you can't kick the ass end out around a corner (you could handbrake I guess but you know what I mean).
 
Well... if you don't like FWD due to understeer, cross an old Forester off your list. They understeer like crazy unless you do a whole truckload of modifications to the suspension.

If you want AWD + fun, then it's better to get an Impreza... but even those have more understeer than some of the better FWDs (like the Focus SVT and the Mazdaspeeds) of the same age.

Cheap and fun the Miata is. Powerful, it is not. Don't know if you can get the later 1.8s in your price range.

Too bad the drift craze has pushed 240SX prices up... just drove an S14 200SX the other night and the thing was wonderful. Nice long wheelbase gives good oversteer transition without feeling too snappy (one reason why you wouldn't want a RWD Mini...) and an SR20DET engine gives you great shove.
 
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Diablo'
Give me one advantage to having a FWD in a state where it never snows, I'd love to hear it.
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Give me one advantage to having RWD in a country where you're not allowed to do either of the following on the public highway:

Diablo'
My definition of having fun in a car is powersliding, doing proper donuts, going down a muddy dirt road or two from time to time, and getting as close to the limit as I can around the twisties.
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Particularly when...

The last two you can do in a FWD
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Finding it hard fathoming where all the RWD awesomeness comes in, frankly.
 
Jondot
Give me one advantage to having RWD in a country where you're not allowed to do either of the following on the public highway:
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It's a little thing called back roads and empty lots

Jondot
Particularly when...
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at an empty four way or close to 90 degree corner and tromping on it though the turn, on a twisty flat clay road, and donuts at a dirt lot or abandoned development in the middle of nowhere. I don't know if you're a city person or what but around where I live I could show you a road that will let you top out your car, a dirt lot to mess around in, plenty of completely abandoned developments, an abandoned clay pit to do some serious off-roading/mudding, and a bunch of different clay roads, all in a 10-20 mile radius, and all either in the absolute middle of nowhere or off the beaten path where noone ever goes.

Johnny law may not like it, but he's too busy patrolling the main road. The clay pits you're actually allowed to go there because the owner of the land doesn't care.

Jondot
Finding it hard fathoming where all the RWD awesomeness comes in, frankly.
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I'm finding it hard to fathom how you could think an FWD is any fun, like I said it's personal preference.

I'm just giving my opinion, and I'm sorry but I loathe FWD. If I wanted to argue about FWD over RWD I would have made a thread.

niky
Well... if you don't like FWD due to understeer, cross an old Forester off your list. They understeer like crazy unless you do a whole truckload of modifications to the suspension.

If you want AWD + fun, then it's better to get an Impreza... but even those have more understeer than some of the better FWDs (like the Focus SVT and the Mazdaspeeds) of the same age.

Cheap and fun the Miata is. Powerful, it is not. Don't know if you can get the later 1.8s in your price range.

Too bad the drift craze has pushed 240SX prices up... just drove an S14 200SX the other night and the thing was wonderful. Nice long wheelbase gives good oversteer transition without feeling too snappy (one reason why you wouldn't want a RWD Mini...) and an SR20DET engine gives you great shove.
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It's not that I don't like FWD because of possible understeer, it's the lack of the ability to power oversteer/drift/powerslide or whatever you want to call getting the ass end out around a corner when tromping on it.

With the impreza and forester is it an understeer issue when taking fast corners, or is it just bags of understeer when doing anything. If I had a forester I'd probably mainly be taking it down clay roads or to the clay pits to have a good time, would I still be able to get it going decently sideways around the corners?

It doesn't have to be perfect, I've still had fun with my 740 on clay roads and it has boat suspension, snap back is a bit more scary in real life than it was on GT4 :lol:
 
I've never driven a forester, but I have driven a relative's impreza wrx which is on the same platform. It oversteers nicely under power stock but is difficult to initiate oversteer through other methods. The front suspension geometry at work causes excessive positive camber in both vehicles, so its not anything resembling neutral. However, I don't think that a standard impreza comes with limited slip in the rear so you may not be able to power oversteer with the base model. If you are so inclined, the impreza responds very well to modifications. The suspension is softly sprung with small sway bars; there is room for improvement here because imprezas and foresters excel at suspension travel and have sufficient ride height.

Compared to other front drive vehicles, it will be more natural based on what you are used to. If it matters to you, the transmission and clutch are merely adequate, nothing special.
 
A decent 4wd car would be mid 90's Eclipse GSX. Great car for the money IMO.
 
Havok_
A decent 4wd car would be mid 90's Eclipse GSX. Great car for the money IMO.
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I wouldn't mind getting one of those, but I've never seen one around here that doesn't look like it's about to fall apart, and the ones I saw on craigslist are on the high end of the budget.

I guess craigslist may not be the best thing to look for cars, but it does seem to do a decent job gauging prices.

Nice suggestion though
 
BMW E36. 318is for the mileage, or the 32xis for that inline six symphony.
 
But one of those would be about $7000, probably, even for a 318.

Personally, I'd go with a V6 Camaro/Firebird from the late 80's or early 90's if you can find one. I'm not a big fan of late 90's F-bodies for some reason.
 
ty00123
But one of those would be about $7000, probably, even for a 318.
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Not really. Older 318s and 323s are pretty cheap, depending on how well they've been taken care of, and how many miles are on it. You just have to be smart with what you pick I suppose.
 
Thing about the first-gen Forester: the US spec ones have a 90% front-drive bias.

You should be able to get a mid nineties legacy for a very reasonable price, between $2k and your budget limit. Mileage will be high, cause Subaru owners are these fossils who actually enjoy driving.

I'm not too sure about the power distribution on those. It might vary, with 45% to the rear wheels at peak being optimistic.

Still, the handling should be wonderful, and they don't have a bad reputation.
 

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