MR2 Turbos

Enfield

Enfield

Enfield

Soldato
Joined
8 Nov 2003
Posts
7,409
Location
UK
Hi guys,

I've been quite bored recently so have been looking at various different cars, such as a Rover Coupe, Honda CRX, Prelude, Golf GTi, Volvo S40 T4, Vauxhall Omega, Audi Coupe, you name it, i've looked at it.

Recent problems with my car have totally put me off 205's - even GTi's not to mention anything French!

Anyway, a while back I did some insurance quotes on a N/A MR2 and it came back at £1800 a year to insure so didn't bother looking till yesterday and I was pleasantly suprised!

I got a quote for a turbo import for £1300 a year - I was paying this much last year for a 1.4 so I really don't care about paying the same for a 2.0 that goes like **** off a shovel!

On to my main question. What should MR2 should I be looking for? I see that there are various different revisions, models and marks. Basically I just want a fully ticked out Mk2 Turbo (am I right in saying that the tubby's are all imports?) which all the bits.

I've read that there are versions kicking out 241ps as standard - is that right? How much should I be looking to spend and am I going to kill myself in one?

Thank you! :)
 
Cheers for the link.

I was thinking of getting a £2k loan and spending about another £500 off my own to get something semi-decent.

However, I shall look into taking out a £3k loan, if I do this I will want to be keeping the car for a long time, which takes me nicely onto modding.

How easy or hard are they to mod, are they really as tail-happy as people say they are?
 
They are a nice car, and are quick :) You really wanna get a rev3 over the rev2, these start on a 93 plate. Up your budget to £3000-3500 and you should have sum great fun with it :)
 
Enfield said:
are they really as tail-happy as people say they are?
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In the dry they have incredible grip up to a point, after which they tend to let go quite quickly, nothing like as progressive as most front engined, RWD cars, and they can suffer from snap oversteer (i.e. you correct a slide and the car violently snaps back the other way). In the dry with decent tyres you have to be really pushing it to reach this limit, in the wet the handling characteristics don't really change, but with the lower grip levels it's that much easier to reach the limits.

Revision 1 cars had the worst reputation, the suspension geometry was change in Rev2 onwards to tame the handling somewhat, but they still bite when provoked. Not a car to jump in to and push hard if you've been used to FWD all your life...
 
You're right. All tubbys are imports.

They're a nice car, and for the cost over performance, I don't feel they can be beat.

With regards to the drive, granted mine is only NA but you can feel the difference in the wet. Basically respect the car and you'll be fine :)
 
I tend not to push cars to the limit anymore as I don't know my own limits! I drive carefully in the wet anyway, but the main thing that will be in my head is snap oversteer as I've experienced it from a FWD car and it wasn't good - then again I wasn't hanging about, but this was two years ago.

A tubby should be good though because I do like to get up to speed, top speed doesn't do a great deal for me. I like my B-road drives and overtaking, should be a breeze in an MR2. :cool:

So it's '93 and above i'm looking for with a £3k budget.

What are the common faults and what is it like with fuel? I drive 16 miles during the week to work and back and the occasional drive at night and a drive every weekend so would like to get an idea of costs.

At the moment my 205 Rallye is costing me £38 to fill up and returns 250-300 miles from a full tank and I probably fill it up every 3-4 days. So yeah that's quite a lot of driving. :)

I can just picture it now...

Black MR2, black alloys, smoked indicators & repeaters, lightly tinted windows, lowered with some mahoosive brakes. :p
 
I bought an MR2 Turbo Rev 3 a few days ago and its really nice. I thought the trip meter was in kilometers so I was getting very worried when it was reading about 100 when I did half a tank of mixed, mainly economic, driving. 100km would equal about 62 miles! Today, though, I found out that it is infact in miles by driving up the motorway to a place which is pretty much exactly 10 miles and the trip counted a 10 mile journey.

To say I am pleased would be an understatement! I was dreading the fuel costs when I thought it was in kilometers! It looks like I will be getting about 220 miles from £38 of superunleaded.... which isn't too bad. Obviously if I were to cane it everywhere I would get nowhere near this.
 
Hunders said:
It looks like I will be getting about 220 miles from £38 of superunleaded.... which isn't too bad. Obviously if I were to cane it everywhere I would get nowhere near this.
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That's about 26-27mpg depending on how much you paid for your super unleaded, and is about right for the MR2 turbo. I managed to squeeze almost 30mpg out of mine driven like a granny, but it would rarely dip below 24mpg even driven quite hard on a run. Around down it gets a bit depressing though.
 
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