Fun car for 1500 ?
- Thread starter P.B
- Start date
Caporegime
Clio 172
MX5 1.8S
Corolla/Celica T-Sport
MR2 140
MX5 1.8S
Corolla/Celica T-Sport
MR2 140
Soldato
MX5 if you can find one that isn't rotten to the core
mk3 MR2
mk3 MR2
Soldato
Puma but they also rot out in the sills and rear arches and brake lines. Nicely balanced cars though and the 1.7 Yamaha engine is the one you want.
Don
Mini Cooper (or Cooper S but will struggle to get a decent one for £1500)
Caporegime
This. MK1's suffer from bad rot to the inner and outer sills (as well as in the usual places on the bodywork) and MK2's are even worse with the same rot issue on the sills, as well as the front chassis legs rotting out! (moisture gets in between the two layers of metal)
They say quite rightly that they have either been welded up or had new sills, or they will need welding up or new sills.
Associate
MG ZS 180 With plenty of change for any upgrades you might want.
Associate
Saxo vts
Clio 172
Clio 172
Soldato
What is it with Mazda and rust?
Even stuff built relatively recently seems to be tin worm fodder.
Even stuff built relatively recently seems to be tin worm fodder.
Mx5
Paper thin jap paint
Paper thin jap paint
They don't seem to rust proof them very well. It's even worse on imported cars.
I bought a new MX-5 in 2007. By the time I sold it in 2011 the rust on the underside was shocking. After just a couple of years many of the bolts were rusted on so badly they had to be drilled out and replaced just to do a wheel alignment :/
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Had no problems with rust on my 2005 RX8
But loads of the bolts seem to been made out of cheese as they would round off from just the sight of a spanner or a 12 point socket..
Aparrantly, you simply do not get old cars in Japan so building them to last is not an issue.
Most modern vehicles seem to be very poor in the rustproofing dept.
I have said before, it is almost "Back to the Future, 1970" when the manufacturers only painted the bits you can see.
I blame the CO2 obsessed.
Manufacturers are shaving off every "Unnecessary" gram, hence no spare wheel, cooling systems with only 4L of water, sumps with only 3L of oil, windscreen wash bottles that only hold 1L of water so you are always having to top them up, and so on.
And of course, No underseal!
(Underseal is thick and heavy, not using it probably shaves as much as 10Kg off the cars weight)
Soldato
Add 500 quid and get an old EP3 
Soldato
I don't see why though. The foreign and domestic are built on different lines or at the very least in different runs. Various foreign markets have different requirements and those are addressed on the build so why not proper rustproofing for cars bound for more moist climates? I know they Japanese don't underseal domestic vehicles as they don't use salt on their roads and as you say they tend to be crushed/written off/exported by a certain age anyway. Besides Mazda seem to be a lot worse than the other Jap car companies so there's cost cutting of some description going on somewhere.