- Buying used cars right now is absolutely absurd.
♪ And this is crazy ♪
Prices are sky high on everything.
Powerful cars, expensive.
Economic cars, expensive.
Trucks, expensive.
It's like everything is being taxed right now,
and it makes it so hard to buy a fun car
for a realistically reasonable amount of money, right?
Like, I just can't justify going out
and paying $15,000 for a car
that was worth eight grand 10 months ago.
- I must be missing something basic, but I'm out.
- And probably will be worth eight grand again
in another 10 months.
And I don't know about you guys, but I can't afford
to just go throw away thousands of dollars.
So like any other rational and sane person,
I spend every waking moment of free time
that I can squeeze out of my day
and I do nonstop research until I can come up
with a list of cars that I can justify
spending my hard-earned money on.
And then I can take my findings
and make them life changing public information
just like any other super important
scientific research expert would do, right?
All right, enough intro.
Stick around for the end of the video,
because this last one's gonna blow your freaking mind.
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Wheels, tires, suspension, fitmentindustries.com.
Let's get into it.
Now, first off is admittedly a bit of a dicey one,
because one fantastic way to get into
a turbocharged manual transmission, German engineered
autobahn destroyer that also gets 50 miles per gallon,
is to get into a diesel gate Volkswagen Jetta or Golf TDI.
If you're looking for the best daily driver
you can possibly buy, you really can't go wrong here.
No, you're not gonna win any races
against any real sports cars,
but a tuned and deleted TDI is a lot of fun.
It does it reliably, gets crazy miles per gallon,
and probably my favorite part
because of the whole diesel gate buy back debacle,
these cars haven't really changed much price wise
over the last couple of years,
which is awesome because that means
you guys get to capitalize in a seller's market.
And these cars do still hold their value very, very well.
And you could really own one of these
for pretty damn near free if you play your cards right.
And then at the end of the day, you still have a Jetta.
So you just go and slap a set of BC racing coil overs
and some rotiforms on this bad boy,
and you've got the best looking daily driver around.
S197, you're goddamn skippy there's a Mustang on this list
because if there's one thing in this world
that skips out on hyperinflation,
it's retro futuristic designs
made with shitty quality materials.
Think Chrysler PT Cruiser, Chevrolet SSR,
Plymouth Prowler, etcetera.
Now, personally, I (beep) love this generation of Mustang
and how it looks.
It just sucks that it's a bit under powered
with only 300 horsepower, which would normally be enough,
but it's kind of heavy and handles like a wet noodle
and only has five gears, and a pretty open differential.
But because of all this, you can still go buy
a 300 horsepower V8 pony car with a clutch pedal
for six to eight grand.
And they've been six to eight grand for years.
They're right at that awkward age
where they're pretty much worthless.
So they sit in limbo even in an aggressive market
like we have today.
But, don't let the lackluster power,
handling, and looks fool you.
They're honestly great vehicles.
The 4.6 is essentially a big stupid truck engine,
so it's pretty damn reliable.
It doesn't make enough torque to break anything.
It's not fast enough to need huge breaks to stop.
It's semi efficient and it's really cheap.
I mean, you can literally go make this thing
look like anything you want.
This is one of the most modified vehicles in the world.
If you can get over the fact
that you might get made fun of for driving a Mustang
this is probably one of the best values on this list.
- Imagine this for a second.
A 260 horsepower turbocharged, two liter,
six speed manual sport compact
with factory launch control.
(car exhaust popping)
And a ton of potential to make big
traction inhibiting front wheel drive power.
Chevrolet Cobalt SS turbo charged
is the boost in that Civic SI that we always wish we had.
For starters, it's a tiny car with 260 horsepower.
Now I know maybe it doesn't sound like a ton,
but out of the box, it's a really good amount
for front wheel drive sport compact.
I mean, you're talking about focus ST performance
for half the money and without any of the inflation.
Sure, it still looks, sounds, and feels like a Cobalt
and that's why they're so cheap and skipped out
on the big down price bubble.
You should be jumping for joy because of it,
because these cars genuinely do have a lot of potential.
Get the right colorful bolt-ons, some coil overs,
and a nice tire, and you're gonna be keeping up
with a lot more expensive stuff around the track.
So if you can get over the whole, you know,
front wheel drive thing,
this is a bargain sport compact tire slayer.
But if value isn't quite your thing
and you'd like to trade off a bit of that reliability
for a little bit more horsepower
and a little bit greater potential for horsepower overall,
then this car might be the one for you
because this one has two turbochargers
connected to a three liter inline six cylinder engine
that's not the Toyota project released.
It wasn't when they came out,
but it kind of is now.
The E90 E92 BMW 335, or I guess even the 135
is anything like that, is a freight train
of an automobile for the money.
For eight to 12 grand, you can go get yourself
a really decent well-maintained 335i
in your choice of coupe sedan, manual, automatic
rear wheel drive, or all wheel drive
in any combination of any of those,
which is pretty cool actually at the end of the day.
Side note, don't sleep on the automatics.
They can take a lot of abuse.
If you're gonna be drag racing these things
making a bunch of power, I might recommend
the automatic more if you can.
But here's the deal,
these cars were fairly advanced for their time
and they were extremely popular,
which means there's a ton of these things around
and they have a few rather expensive common issues
like turbo failure.
Labor to rebuild two turbos comes with a decent sized bill.
These cars are direct injected as well
so carbon cleanings are gonna be a thing.
This era hasn't aged well with interior quality either,
but it's not as bad as maybe say the Mustang.
As far as the mass market goes,
those are usually kind of deal breakers.
And that's where us enthusiasts kind of swoop in
and grab the deals.
Look, there's enough of these around
that you can pretty much do anything yourself
with a step-by-step tutorial online.
If you're the slightest bit mechanically inclined
and looking for the fastest car
with the most power potential
while still sneaking under that inflation bubble,
the 335 is gonna be really hard to beat.
But now let's say you're maybe, you know,
feeling a little bit greedy, a little bit extra thrifty.
You don't wanna just save money, you wanna make money.
- I like money.
- Well get out that pen and notepad, buds,
because this (beep) about to get serious.
Now in order to make a prediction like this,
you really have to dig deep.
You gotta do your research, find patterns,
and then from there, it's really just educated gambling
at that point.
Let's be real.
Right now, we are approaching the explosion
of JDM superstardom.
The big legendary couple of cars
are already screaming upward in value,
but what follows after that, the next best in line.
That's what.
When the Mark 4 Supra becomes real big baller money,
you're gonna start to see Mark 4 Supras
get in on that come up.
You're talking about a nameplate with tons of heritage.
It's the next best looking to the Mark 4.
Does still make it susceptible to be a real superstar
even if it won't be a legend, like the Mark 4.
Anyway, patterns.
I've noticed that right in that 25 to 35 year old mark
is right when you kind of want to jump in on these trends,
and towards that 35 to 40 year old mark
is when these things really start to turn around
and take a neat car if you're gonna do a real collector.
This age is also the reason I think
these avoided the inflation bubble
that you see with most of the other cars these days.
It's simply too old to be consumed by the mass market,
and not quite old enough to be
in full collector mode just yet.
The Mark 3 is the perfect example
of being in the right place at the right time.
It's the right age and it's a great time to buy.
It's younger brothers have the fame
and it's older brothers have the heritage.
The Mark 3 has that delicious boxy 80s charm.
It has a very potent for its era 230 horsepower
turbocharged 7M-GTE powering this bad boy.
And it has a really cool engine layout.
This is really sort of the beginning
of the boosted inline six horsepower wars,
and the Mark 3 was my first time ever hearing
a big single turbo inline six roll up
and do a rolling burnout in front of me
and changed my life forever.
They look great, they had a huge impact
during the generation.
If you can handle owning a 35 year old turbo tuner supra,
you're probably gonna be the best off long-term
so long as you don't end up with a shit box.
And so with that, the last one this list checks
all the collector boxes.
It's just ever so slightly older than the Mark 3,
so it's subject to the same theoretical collectibility.
Still seems to be holding under that inflation line,
but just barely hanging on there.
The FC generation Mazda RX-7 turbo two
is probably the safest car
to sink your money into right now.
It's at the perfect age.
It represents an era of time that's easily distinguished.
It was just upscale enough to have everyone dreaming,
and just barely affordable enough to make it realistic.
It was a fantastic looking and driving car
that was just unconventional enough
to grab and hold people's attention.
This was a sports car for the real enthusiast
who wanted to step out of the box
and still sort of seem to be the case to this day.
But none of that matters,
what matters is you can buy a piece
of 80s JDM boosted sports car history
without paying some sort of nonsensical market tax,
which is gonna set you up for long-term success
because losing money on a car, straight up nonsense.
And you don't have to do it
as long as you play your cards right.
So I hope letting you guys in
on my super secret list of affordable cars
doesn't inflate the prices of these cars specifically.
And if they do, I'm sorry.
You can blame Dakota.
He found my auto market notebook
and keeps making me publicize my lists,
and ruining all of my strategies.
And remember to subscribe and click that bell
to stay up to date with all the crazy stuff we're doing.
Like, oh, geez, I don't know, giving away
a whole S2000 and $10,000.
Or having crazy Black Friday deals,
and cutting up our wheels to make franken wheel.
Look, you're not gonna wanna miss it.
I'm Sean, seanb.fi on Instagram.
Thank you so much for watching.
Peace.
(upbeat music)