However the prelude needs a lot of bodywork doing now, plus a custom CAT made up so I don't have to fit one every MOT, plus some ball joints, plus new front leather seat covers etc. etc. Basically £2.5 - £3K plus about 50-100 hours of my time to sort other things out.
We both need cars for work. I'm going to have to sell our little civic soon and get a van or more likley a big people carrier that I could drop the back seats down, put some protective flooring in, and be able to forklift a pallet in the back! That way I could use it for work during the week and we could also use it on the weekends and be able to fit bikes and all that other crap you sometimes want to take around with kiddies.
Having 3 cars isn't really a practical option for us...
So we either dump a load of money on the prelude now, then loose it all when we need 5 seats since it'll only be worth what a grand or two (even though it's got £5K+ worth of performance parts - built engine etc), so will probably end up being split and scrapped.
At the moment we're thinking of what else we could get but can't decide on what to do or which to get.
1. Evo 10 FQ300. This is definitely the favourite but they're around £12K
and we'd be looking at an additional £2K a year in costs for tax, insurance and maintenance. We don't really like the look of any older ones. I guess when we come to sell it in a few years we might get £5-7K back.2. Integra DC5. Nice car but a lot of money for not really that much power/speed. Again we don't like the older ones.
3. Mazda 6 MPS. Good performance, comfortable and relatively cheap. Only thing is it looks like just another car, there's nothing special about it.
We don't really want anything Subaru, Audi, BMW or Mercedes. Scoobies are a bit Essex and everyone and his dog drives something German round here. I guess there might be something from the Vauxhall VXR range but Vauxhall reliability isn't great from my experience. Then there's the Volvo V70 T5 which I think I could live with but the mrs thinks it belongs at a funeral directors.
Maybe we would settle for a Mitsubishi Lancer 10 and drop the Evo fun and games.
So it must have 5 seats, be fast/very fast, ideally 4wd if not rwd, look good and be fairly rare/unusual, and be good value for money on the 2nd hand market.
I guess a few of us might have been in the same pickle as us so wanted to thow this out there for comments and ideas
