Fighting automotive cat-lady syndrome, or can get cheap VTEC, wat do?

I have too many cars. I don't need to buy another one. I should not buy another one. I need to focus on the stuff I have.

Then a Civic EX coupe (D-series VTEC) is basically abandoned here and I can pick it up for less than I was about to spend on tires for my Volvo. Looks fairly clean for a 20 year old Civic, looks less rusty than my Volvo anyway.

I don't NEED those tires, but then I don't really need a Civic, either. Especially a manual trans Civic.

The demon on my left shoulder says buy it, put it back together, and flip it for easy profit. The demon on my right shoulder says buy it, eBay turbo kit, go all BOOOOST until it blows up. The angel saying to not buy it can't be heard over the other two.

Now what?

Challenge car?

I can't be the only one who sees the obvious.

Seems obvious but I have no aspirations to build a Challenge car.

What I'm seeing is the MS3-Pro system I want to put in one of the cars I already own, shaped like a Civic.

The added difficulty is I don't actually have the money. I can scrape up the cash, but only if I live for the next month-6 weeks off of credit cards. Which is dumb.

Boost it. Duh

In reply to Knurled:

But you can be an enabler.

When i hit 11 cars i knew i went too far. Thankfully i lost the place i stored my cars. (Parents moved) so now i use my limited space to act as a detterent.

Knurled wrote: ...go all BOOOOST until it blows up during the last drag run at the end of a Challenge weekend.

FTFY

In your situation i would skip it. I may have made a lot of stupid decisions in my life with cars but the only time i ever went into any kind of credit card debt over a car was buying a converted Mirage EV and while i don't really regret the ownership aspect i do in retrospect think that buying it with a credit card was stupid. I know you're not really proposing buying a car directly with a credit card but it sounds like it would amount to the same thing.

I drove past a buy-here, pay-here lot in a rental car on a work trip, just as they were pulling a 94 MR2 Turbo up into a spot. Told my coworkers to drop me off on the way to our meeting and take the rental and I would catch up with them. Drove the car...it had just been traded by the original owner and they bought it from the Toyota dealership. "I need $5,995 for this here car today." "Fine...put it on my Visa."

Played with the car a few months and sold it for $10,500. Putting a car on a credit card has it's merits. If it's a screaming deal, then it's worth it. If not, keep moving.

Boost!

It's a risky plan, but if you can reasonably expect to sell it for profit, then buy it and flip it as quickly as possible. Sounds like the extra cash might help right now, and sometimes you have to spend money to make money, but it should be a calculated risk.

If there's any uncertainty about how much profit you'd make, or how quickly, then don't mess with it.

Strong "no" on keeping it as another project car if money is tight. Cars are great, but a beater Civic isn't great enough to go broke for.

If you have to scrape together the cash to buy something it better be more interesting than a Civic.

Played with the car a few months and sold it for $10,500. Putting a car on a credit card has it's merits. If it's a screaming deal, then it's worth it.

Well, screaming deal doesn't necessarily mean it will pay for itself in my world. I'm usually fighting with the junkyards for the cars I buy. In fact, one of my sorest memories is losing a nice Cadillac Cimarron to a junkyard at auction by $20 when my proxy bidder misunderstood me on something.

Lesson: get a dealer's license so i can bid against PicknPull my damn self!

EvanB wrote: If you have to scrape together the cash to buy something it better be more interesting than a Civic.

Yeah, but it's an EX, if it passes emissions, someone would pay $2000-2500 for it.

But then I'd have to deal with Craigslist whiners, so I'm not sure if it'd be a net gain or not.

Good news everyone! It also has a slipping clutch and a rod knock. And the underside is pretty raunchy. Looks like the junkyard is getting it for $150 tomorrow.