That moment when you realize you're all over the map

Knurled is looking at cars. There are various pros and cons for each, but the short list is:

Passat W8 Wagon (Pro: Galvanized, AWD, love the chassis, V8 grumble. Con: It's a W8)

Escape Hybrid (Pro: 30mpg, can tow anything I want, want to play with a hybrid. Cons: It's a truck. Not AWD. Body rot problems.)

Focus SVT (Pro: Hot hatch with Quaife and tough 6sp from the factory. Will overlook lack of AWD because hot hatch. Cons: Has red rear turn signals, a major safety problem IMO. Body rot problems)

Volvo V70 Cross Country (Pro: Turbo 5cyl AWDness. Wagon. Bulletproof everything. Con: No alibi, it's ugly. A little cramped too)

Evo VIII. (Pro: It's an Evo VIII. Con: It's a Mitsubishi. Not a wagon.)

I don't really see any common theme between any of these except cool factor...

EVO!!!

I assume that's a fairly common affliction here on GRM.

The only solution is to buy a p71, a Miata and an xj Cherokee then compile a list like the one above and fill any automotive gaps you may encounter from that list, ala Aussiesmg.

Evo. Duh. You'll learn to enjoy the pain.

I need to buy a car very soon for winter commuting. Has to be challenge money priced. So my wildly practical self considers the following:

E30 BMW (likely contender)

Miata (that will go great in 6" of powder)

worn out Jeep Wrangler

4 door Ford Falcon

You can see the problem.

The difficulty is that I've lost shop access, so I figured that it is cheaper to suck it up and make car payments vs. renting a place to work out of. Nothing will be rallycrossed, everything is just some dumb thing to drive.

Well, I'd rallycross an Evo. There seems to be a 100% parity between Evos entered at the national championships, and titles won in Evos, and I'd like to break that streak

Honestly, if the taillights are the only thing keeping you from the SVT, why not try to get a set of euro spec taillights?

That would be the angle I'd be after, but the wiring and body control module are probably different. It's not really a dealbreakaer so much as it is a major annoyance, since one can't tell if it's someone tapping their brake or using the turn signal when there is a truck parked two feet off of a given car's bumper unless the signals are amber like the developed world uses. Anyway, I found out that they did NOT come with Quaifes, the Focus RS did.

Was also looking into Cobalts, because it'd be easier to get a loan on a sub-8yr old car and Cobalts are the least scrody modern cars I can think of. Say, did you know that SS =/ supercharged? Neither did I. SS sedans did at least have the 2.4l instead of the 2.2. But gosh, supercharged SSs are still flippin' expensive. I liked driving wae's Neon which made me think SRT-4 but those are even more expensive than Cobalt SSs.

I mean, philosophically, if a ten year old SRT-4 is still going to run five figures, the Evo option makes more sense.

(minutes later)

Wait, when did Mazdaspeed6 pricing fall through the floor? I remember when they were $20k used cars because people only found out about them after nobody bought them. Now... they are cheaper than the Mazdaspeed3s.

Buy the Focus SVT. Great cars that get overlooked a lot. I have a lot of parts from parting them out.

i have a truck for daily driving and doing truck stuff..

i have my Camaro for when i want to rumble around and feel like white trash..

i have my Regal T Type for when i want to look at something and wonder why i never get around to fixing the transmission..

i have a Neon that i use to convince myself that i'm going to have a street legal road racer as my mid life crisis project..

i guess what i'm saying is that why try to find one vehicle for everything when you can have every vehicle for everything?

a few weeks ago i was looking for a 93-96 caddy fleetwood, a caprice wagon, or an outback. wound up with the roadmonster.

My vote , Mazdaspeed6 , great car and tons of fun (even practical).

From what I have seen, Mazda was a little overzealous with respect to torque management. I read in multiple places things like "don't go into boost below 3000rpm or you risk ventilating the block" (Hi Evan!) which sounds like they used the same crappy rods as standard Duratecs. Granted, good rods are fairly inexpensive, but they're in a rather pain in the ass place to get to. The intake carboning thing I see as more of a point of interest rather than a detriment, since we're working on procedures to decarbonize DI engines.

Mazdaspeed6 is definitely on the shortlist now, though.

"The choice is made."

I couldn't decide if I wanted a Volvo or an Evo so I bought both-ish.

Should have the title/tags by Saturday, new snow tires are on order and should be in by next week. I swear to any deity of your choice (Thor, Zeus, Toivonen, Burton) that it is entirely a coincidence that the rally tires I bought for the RX-7 are the correct size for it, as well as the fact that the wheels they're mounted on are, in fact, the same wheels used on this chassis in some markets/guises.

The sensible choice.

The person I bought it from did not know it was turbocharged. Well, the turbo is rather hidden, and there's no boost gauge, and the only kind of badging at all that would indicate forced induction is the implication made by the discreet "1.9t" badge on the decklid.

So, he'd been filling it with 87.

I realize this, because I topped up for the first time today, and I feed anything forced induction with 93. And now the engine is much, much happier. Before it felt like a kinda lazy N/A engine. Now it feels like a happy, much larger N/A engine. The torque curve spec is a lot like the VW 1.8t: completely flat from very low to a couple thousand before redline. (I suspect that Volvo did this on purpose, given that the 1.8t powered many of the Volvo's direct competitors)

The trans and I have a kind of understanding, now. A dip of the throttle firm enough to cause kickdown is also enough to get the engine into a few pounds of BOOOOOST and away we go. It's actually very well calibrated and matched for the engine, as the time for the turbo to spool up is also the time required for the shift, so you don't really sense turbo lag. The only time lag seems noticeable is how it accelerates harder after the 1-2 shift, which is perfectly fine because that happens pretty rapidly anyway, and it's a front-driver so how hard can you really expect it to accelerate from a stop?

Real Volvos have sharp edges.

140s don't have sharp edges

When I was underneath this thing today when doing an oil change with ACEA-happy synthetic oil and a MANN filter (has the common cam-phaser issue, is how I got it so cheap) and throwing the snow tires on, the enormity of what I'd done finally hit home. My God, I bought a Mitsubishi. The thing is pure Lancer underneath. But then it has the goofy Volvo climate control and the Volvo "put the steering wheel in the firewall" non-ergonomics and headlight wipers, which I think are awesome because the thing that sucked about the VW in the winter was pulling off the road every few miles to wipe the slush and snow off of the headlights.

The stability control/ABS and I are still coming to an understanding. It's mostly for the good, mind you.

True, most of the Volvos I really want have curves.

The AWD on the S40 is something I wondered about for a while. Let me know how it does, it should fit under a Mazdaspeed3 chassis =)

Brett_Murphy wrote: The AWD on the S40 is something I wondered about for a while. Let me know how it does, it should fit under a Mazdaspeed3 chassis =)

I'll let you know if I ever get an all wheel drive S40

First-gen S40s (in N.A.) were all turbo whiteblock fours on a sort of stretched CE9A chassis, front drive only.

The Volvo/Focus was the second gen S40. Get a turbo second gen S40, and you have the main bits of the original Focus ST.