As I’ve previously shared, my wife is awesome and is open to the idea of me getting a fun car, so I’ve started softly looking, running across a nicely-prepped 2007 NC Sport at a local car lot.
The Good: It’s got about 60k on the clock and being the base Sport trim, comes with the five-speed manual (instead of the six-speed), which gives you a little more speed in second gear, which is a bit more ideal for autocross. As you can probably glean from the picture, it’s wearing OZ Alleggerita wheels shod with really old Michelins (date code 2014). It has the desirable removable hard top and there’s a Hard Dog rolbar under there too. Roadster Sport exhaust, Ohlins coilovers and a strut tower brace round out the modifications. No accidents or damage listed on Carfax and the car’s appearance agrees with that.
The Bad: it only has three owners, but the last one resulted in a repo. It has a cheapo Bazooka base tube and junky amp in the trunk that I’d need to rip out and fix any wiring/holes created by that. Last owner looks to be an idiot kid who did crap like that but didn’t do anything good for the car - services, tires, etc. Needless to say, I’d baseline everything after buying it, including new rubber. I’m also not a fan of the OZs, but they wouldn’t bother me enough to consider swapping. Headlights are also hazed, but would probably polish up fine. The Ohlins are also likely overdue for a rebuild considering the previous owner.
Dealer is asking $9k. With the hardtop included, NADA and Edmunds think it’s worth $7500.
My offer would be that $7500 less a set of tires ($500) and less $250 to baseline maintenance because of the repo, which would put me at $6750 on the car.
What do you think? It’s clearly CP at $9k, but I think would be NP at my offer.