How to spend $30,000

**Note - this article was written three years ago.  It has since become inaccurate.**

You could buy the best car in the world with your $30,000.  What is the best car on which to spend your cash?  It seems like a simple enough statement. “The best car in the world is the Thrustmaster Velociraptor XR Turbo.” Somebody is inevitably going to dispute your assertion. So, if we are to delve into this problem, a few qualifiers should apply. Obviously expensive cars can be generally better than inexpensive cars. If money were no object, it would not be America, or any other place on this planet as far as I am aware of. And it would be easier to pick the best car in the world. With an unlimited budget, you could have whatever you wanted, custom built for you by a group of craftsmen from around the world. The engine would be made by the Germans, they are good at that kind of thing. The body would be styled by the Italians, but it would be built by the Japanese. The interior would come from Crewe, Great Britain. And if money came to you as easily as flatulence, the best car in the world, your perfect car, would be a few careful decisions away.

Here in the real world, however, things are not that easy. In the real world we go to work, we pay bills, we try to stay in shape, we save for retirement, we watch reality TV shows. Decisions are made carefully, as if there were consequences. And, indeed there are. So, money is undoubtedly an object. To keep things real, I have chosen as our price limit is the best selling car in America. The Toyota Camry. The average Camry  is just a hair under $30,000.  Since 1.2 million people drop that kind of money on a Camry every year, this figure must not scare most people.  Of course the Chevy Silverado and Ford F150 outsell the Camry 3 to 1, but this is the best car in the world, not the best pickup truck in the world. I do not understand why somebody would use a full size pickup truck as a car, but it obviously happens all the time.

So, what should you buy for your Camry dollars? 20,000 people a month buy a Camry, but not because it is the best car in the world. It is neither sporty nor beautiful.  It is a little unfair to compare

a Camry to a sports car. First off, if you have little people that ride with you everywhere, you must have room for them. It does not mean you have to drive a Camry, though. You can get a sports car with room for childrens. It is known as the BMW M3. It will have to be a two door for this kind of money, but in a couple of years a four door 2008 M3 with a V8 will be right in our target price range. And there is no getting around how good the M3 is. Even with four doors, the M3 can embarrass many purpose built sports cars. So there we go.  Discussion ended.

Not quite. While the M3 is very, very, very good, it is not what I am looking for here. It is still a sedan, just 18 feet of some car. Even worse, there will be a better one soon, and your best sports car in the world will be just another old sedan, depreciating away.

The best sports car in the world must have more going for it. It must be fast, beautiful, fun to drive. It must make you happy, even when it is simply sitting in the driveway.  Even when you have had no sleep, and you have to get up early to go to a meeting. It must make you tingle inside, just looking at it. It must make you feel smart for choosing it as your own. It must push the right buttons. The M3 pushes some buttons, but I don't think anybody will get lustful feelings just looking at one. The problem with the M3, or almost any new fast car for that matter, is a lack of soul. A lack of danger.  You get the feeling you could do no wrong, you are a driving god, even with your fists of ham.  I am not saying you can't find a new car with that undefinable something, but it is impossible to find a new sports car for 30 large with much power, noise, excitement, danger, soul stirring stuff. New cars come with too many lawyers attached.  SRC, ABS, OSC, URP, SRS, LDW, CCA, DDD. I am not looking for something that will keep me out of trouble, I am looking for something that allows me to keep myself in check, if I wish.  And deliver the adrenalin like a shotgun blast to the face when I want.  I am looking for that “lifetime car.” A car that I would be happy to keep forever, passing it on to my children. Of course I am talking about a two seater, so I have no children.

If it is lecherousness we are after, fewer things inspire concupiscence like an Italian thoroughbred. Something like Ferrari, Lamborghini, or Maserati. You may think it would be impossible to get a mid engine Italian exotic in our price range. You would be wrong. Not some old kit car that looks like a Ferrari, but a genuine 1990's Ferrari. A bona fide supercar. A V8, mid engine, 8,000RPM screaming red Ferrari once owned by somebody you have heard of. A basketball star, or an actor. For Camry money you can find a Ferrari 348TB. How crazy is that. Most Italian supercars are way out of our price range, how is it that we can even entertain the notion of getting a Ferrari? Because it is dreadful. It rides like the tires are made of wood.  The interior is full of buttons that do nothing, because they were installed by passionate Italians many, many years ago. The engine has to be removed in order to perform any maintenance, and the level of maintenance rivals a stealth bomber. In fact, it was such a terrible car the newly appointed president of Ferrari almost quit on the spot when he drove one for the first time. The 348 showed everything that was wrong with Ferrari. Resting on laurels is a term used with some accuracy.  In the 90's Ferrari lost their way, and as a result, the 348 has become the bargain basement model.

 So, even if you could buy a Ferrari, you should not. Likewise there is no Lamborghini or Maserati in our price range that should be considered. Even if you could manage to pay for the car, it would cost more than the purchase price to maintain the car. The problem with high strung Italian sports cars is

they have to be maintained like the space shuttle. As far as I know, every hour of driving enjoyment will result in 20 hours of certified service, using special tools, at $195 an hour. Plus parts.
The prancing horses have been removed from our equation, but we are not stuck with the Camry forever. We just need to look harder to fill out sporting ambitions. Something powerful, beautiful, undeniably fast, turbocharged, low, wide, a car featured in several movies, and hand made in the English countryside.

May I present the Lotus Esprit Turbo. James Bond had one. Richard Gere had one. Sharon Stone had one.  The plastic, fantastic Mick Jagger of the automotive world. No matter how old it is, it just keeps on rocking. It started life in the early 70's and was steadily improved with 2 styling updates and eventually a V8 over the next 30 years. It is much more uncommon than any Ferrari, much faster than almost anything (0-60 in 4.3 seconds), and stunningly beautiful. For the money there is simply nothing faster or prettier on the planet.  And you would be nuttier than squirrel poop to buy one.

When was the last time you heard somebody say “fine English craftsmanship?” Just think of the British car makers you know. The big manufacturers like Rolls Royce, Austin Martin, Jaguar, and Land Rover, the smaller ones like MG, TVR, and Triumph. All crap. In America we only got the best examples. In England there were mountains of unreliable little boxes like the Morris Marina, the Reliant Robbin, the Rover anything. Some were designed well, some were very pretty, but all were nailed together by workers that did not want to be building cars. What I mean is the British car industry spent 20 years fighting with its employees. As a result most of the time cars were not being built. Cars were sitting in various states of completeness on the factory floor while everybody went outside and stood around a burning dust bin. One reason the cottage car market boomed in England is because it was the only way to get a car made in England. But nobody, it seems, could do it right.  The underlying problem was the economy, not the inability of the English to manufacture anything reliable. As a result no car maker had the assets to invest in quality control. Therefore, think of a Lotus as a reverse “kit car.” It starts life as a whole car, then disintegrates into various components as time passes. The only advantage to owning a Lotus over a Ferrari is service is much cheaper, because you will have to figure it out for yourself.  There were so few made, and so few dealers that nobody bothered to figure out how to fix them, at least in America. If you are not afraid to turn your own wrenches, working a Lotus is only slightly more dangerous than diffusing a hydrogen bomb. With the help of the internet everything should be OK.

The Italians and English are beautiful and fast, but desire and practicality do not match up. It seems like in order to make a car with the proper attitude, it has to be screwed together by people who don't care or with reckless abandon. We need serous people to make our car.  We need a place with no sense of humor.  A place where David Hasselhoff is accepted an entertainer.  The Germans. While there are many fine German automakers, only one has consistently built sports cars.  How about a Porsche, then? While I can't give you a satisfactory reason, I would not consider a Porsche at all.  Most are well made, some are pretty, some are fast, some are rare, some are good values.  And I would rather have a root canal sans Novocaine than own a Porsche. The problem with Porsche is their success. Porsche clothing, bicycles, watches, luggage, coasters, all things that have nothing to do with a car, but are designed by Porsche and sold by Porsche. Porsche TV dinners, Porsche shampoo, Porsche toilet paper, Porsche lawnmowers, Porsche healthcare, Porsche retirement planning service... Porsche does make some good cars, but I don't want one. Besides, a Porsche is a little too commonplace. If you had one, you would constantly want a better one.

A Corvette might work. Certainly there are many, many Corvettes in our budget. They are very fast, pretty reliable, reasonably comfortable, and completely out of the question. A Corvette is a Chevrolet, and everything you come into contact with in a Corvette will not let you forget that. The window switches work fine, but they feel a little cheap. The A/C will freeze you out, but the controls are straight out of an Impalla. The radio sounds good, but it says Bose on it. Everywhere, on every speaker, on each part of the stereo. It even scrolls Bose across its face when you turn it on, just in case you missed the 48 little Bose stickers all over the car. The seats are roomy, maybe a little too roomy, designed for the value meal consuming American size butt, and as a consequence will not hold you properly when you turn up the wick. And things will break. Little things, big things. Failures are indiscriminate, things will fall off here and there. It will be a rare day indeed when everything in the car is working, all at once. And you will never find one with a manual transmission.

Oh, if only somebody that knows how to build cars properly would make a special car. A true sports car. One with racing pedigree, hand made, beautiful to drive, stunning to behold. Witness the Acura NSX. A rare, hand built, Formula One inspired road rocket made in a laboratory clean factory by people simply obsessed with getting it right. The pride of a nation rides on its springs. Honda built the NSX just to show Ferrari, Porsche, Lotus, and Maserati that they not only beat them on the race track, they beat them on the street. Of course Lamborghini has never built a race car.  If they had, Honda would have beat them, too. The NSX is as fast and as pretty as any Italian exotic, but real people can live with one easily. It is, after all, a Honda. Everything works, every time. Servicing it is as easy as any Accord or Civic. You can see out of it. It rides good, the A/C blows copious amounts of cold air, likewise the heat works just fine, all the time. The stereo is made by Honda, and it doesn't say so anywhere on it.  The brakes work in the wet.  The seats are both very comfortable, and very supportive. These seem like simple things that cars should do, but when you are looking at supercars, compromises must be made.  A Camry not simply working is unacceptable, while a broken down Maserati is still
beautiful.  Remember, the last pretty Ferrari was 25 years ago, and people still line up to buy them.  It is not because they are pretty, or well made, or get good gas mileage.  It is because they make you feel better.  If you want a better car than the NSX, you would have to spend much, much more than our Camry budget allows, and I don't know if it would be on a better car.

So, the best way to spend your Toyota Camry dollars is to spend about half as much on a Nissan 300ZX twin turbo, and keep the rest for beer. Or BBQ. If you are bound and determined to spend $30,000, you can get an Acura NSX, or an old Porsche or Ferrari.  Cars worse than the 300ZX.  Cars that are not as handsome, not as comfortable, not as practical, not as easy to service, and not as fast. A car that is a little more prestigious possibly, but no better in any appreciable way.  When new the 300ZX was compared to the very cars in this article, and most journalists came to the same conclusion.  Why spend more money to get less car?  The 300ZX has earned accolades aplenty: top 10 prettiest cars of the last 20 years, best sports car value of the last 20 years, groundbreaking automotive design of the 90's, car of the year, Car and Driver 10 best list 6 straight years, automobile of the year, winner of numerous comparison tests, the darling of journalists and owners alike, the list goes on and on and on.  The best car you can get at almost any realistic price is a good 300ZX Twin Turbo. Perfect 5,000 mile museum pieces will approach $25,000, but you wouldn't drive one of those. A really really good one will be closer to $15,000. Ones that need some attention should be about $7,000.  So, spend more on less, if you wish. The 300ZX may be a little more common than an exotic, but that never diminished the appeal.

Of course, I refuse to take my own advice.  My personal choice is the Lotus  Esprit V8 Twin Turbo.  Granted, it will take a few years for the price to come down to our budget here.  But that simply allows me to keep saving money until I find the perfect example. Black with tan interior. The Lotus is rare, stunningly beautiful, and blisteringly fast.  When you are standing beside one, there is no more exquisite car in person (or in the plastic).  While it does require more mechanical attention than almost any normal car, it is worth it.  These examples were actually fairly reliable.  Most of the ordinary parts have been taken from normal, everyday Vauxhauls.  It is still a Lotus, the transmission is terrible, little things will always be going wrong, and the day you are looking forward to driving it after a long winter's storage, the battery will be flat.  I don't care.  It is like making a good meal at home, rather than stopping at Olive Garden one afternoon.  It requires a bit more effort, but the rewards make up for the sacrifice.  My retirement years will be spent in the garage rubbing my plastic English sports car with a cloth diaper.  I will keep it in proper working order, and I will drive it almost daily.  And I will never regret it, or trade it in on a new Camry.