My vote is for an 84-85 RX-7 GSL-SE or a 79-80 base. The 79-80 have the cool vintage bumpers & make the car look more classic. The gsl-se will be more reliable and get better mileage with its fuel-injected motor.
These cars are dead simple to work on, parts are cheap and readily available, and are fun to drive and well-behaved enough to make a great DD.
Aren't all RX-7s known for getting awful gas mileage?
I like the looks of the early RX-7s but have always stayed away from them because of the rotorary motors. I know nothing about rotorarys except that there are triangles involved. I'd really love a classic RX-7 with something like a Speed3 motor. But that is apples to oranges with the RX7 being RWD and the Speed3 motor being FWD.
I've really been looking at 944s lately. They meet a lot of the criteria. But when you start looking at them finding one that is taken care of and not a neglected turd can get expensive.
A 12A car in good tune can pull down mid to high 20s MPG on the highway. My 13B-powered GSL-SE didn't get anywhere near that, but it was tired because of 280k without a rebuild. N/A rotary engines are very, very dependable in my experience.
Just an FYI, if your rotary engine does give up on you, they are cheap to replace / rebuild. The parts are so plentiful, it's ridiculous, at least they were about 7 years ago when I bought about 5 of them for a grand and built 2 good cars out of them.
I megasquirted / header / streetported a 13b in one of them and it made a beautiful sound and was fast as hell. Total build with new everything was under 5k for the entire car.
Older Porsches are cheap to buy, but to keep it on the road... not so much. Especially those 80's models. I have a buddy that spent about 7k in 18 months trying to daily drive his 944. It had the craziest things go wrong with it, everything plastic seemed to crack and was very expensive to replace.
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