Ridiculously overpriced used cars

McLaren
Expensive, but not crazy outlandish if they're stripping the car down to bare metal and building the car back up in their image. They seem to be using a lot of quality parts as well.
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I have no doubt that someone could dump $100,000 on a GT-R, especially if they stuck with OEM parts. I just don't think it's what most people would do with that kind of money. The engine bay in particular was kinda disappointing to me.
 
Custom878
I have no doubt that someone could dump $100,000 on a GT-R, especially if they stuck with OEM parts. I just don't think it's what most people would do with that kind of money. The engine bay in particular was kinda disappointing to me.
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That's just it; they didn't stick with OEM parts. They went above OEM quality. There is clearly a lot of work that went into it beyond just adding mods.

I Googled some of the parts listed to get an idea of those prices alone.
That AiM unit is $2,500+. Don't know what brakes they went with but Endless 6-pot rotors for a R32 are $7,800 for a full setup. APP seems to run around $4,000 for a 6-pot, so I'd wager around there realistically. Nichiei coilovers are a minimum $1,000 as far as I found. That Trust turbo is around $2-2,500. And I found the BNR34 transmission being listed around $6-8,000. On the low end, that's probably somewhere around $12-14,000 in parts & that's not getting into the piping, intercooler, twin-disc clutch, etc. Googling the 2.8L kit for the RB26 motor turns up some expensive options as well. And then getting that interior put together with the full roll cage & a custom touch pad. If you were able to pick up a GT-R here for $20,000 as a starting point, I wouldn't be surprised if you've got at least another $20,000-$25,000 in materials alone. That's $40,000 before the car even comes apart. The labor will probably make up a huge chunk of time as well as tuning it.

It is still pretty pricey, but if they're putting a limited number on it, that's going to help. The car reminds me of Singer's view without it being tailored made to customer & those easily exceed $300,000 for what just appears to be a modernized classic 911.
 
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$20,000 is perfectly reasonable for an imported S13 compared to the crap that Japanese Classics LLC pumps out. Wasn't long ago a salvage title/R grade EG6 was sold for 13k.

@-Fred-, have R32 prices in Canada gone up since they were able to be imported in the States? Over here they've been able to since the nineties, but when they became US eligible, $15k NZD R32s quickly went up to $25k+
 
SVX
@-Fred-, have R32 prices in Canada gone up since they were able to be imported in the States? Over here they've been able to since the nineties, but when they became US eligible, $15k NZD R32s quickly went up to $25k+
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Not really, at least not since R33s and R34s have available for import over here along with stuff like JZX100s and S15 Silvias, cars that are much more valuable with a lot more street cred and have had a much bigger following on the internet. R32s weren't really pricey from the get go when they first became available 10-12 years ago, 25k CAD could get you a pretty good GT-R back then, but people mostly imported GTS-Ts and GTS-Ms for some reason. It's the R34s that are going for insane money as of now, I've not seen one lower than 90k$ yet, and we're talking bone stock, 160 000km V-Spec IIs here... You can get an R35 Spec V/Corvette Z06/Viper/997 GT3/Gallardo/R8 etc for that amount of money...
 
-Fred-
Not really, at least not since R33s and R34s have available for import over here along with stuff like JZX100s and S15 Silvias, cars that are much more valuable with a lot more street cred and have had a much bigger following on the internet. R32s weren't really pricey from the get go when they first became available 10-12 years ago, 25k CAD could get you a pretty good GT-R back then, but people mostly imported GTS-Ts and GTS-Ms for some reason. It's the R34s that are going for insane money as of now, I've not seen one lower than 90k$ yet, and we're talking bone stock, 160 000km V-Spec IIs here... You can get an R35 Spec V/Corvette Z06/Viper/997 GT3/Gallardo/R8 etc for that amount of money...
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The market is odd here. FDs are easy to get for around 13k NZD (with them only approaching 20k for low mileage, high end trim examples), however the roughest of 180SXes are closer to 19k.
 
This showed up in one of my Toyota groups.

d7KZGHf.jpg
 
Lupo GTIs are very cool cars, but they hover around the £6,500 - £8,000 range, even with high mileage. I'm not sure they're actually worth it, or if the combination of the 'VDub' tax and relative rarity just bumps it up.
 
INEEDNAWZZZ
Lupo GTIs are very cool cars, but they hover around the £6,500 - £8,000 range, even with high mileage. I'm not sure they're actually worth it, or if the combination of the 'VDub' tax and relative rarity just bumps it up.
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The Golf Mk 5 GTi is pretty expensive as well. Not that bad but I've seen anywhere from 3-8k after a quick look on autotrader, yet the condition and mileage seems to have no correlation. You could get an appreciating Volvo Amazon for the same price though. Think I know which I'd have!
 
£61k for an M635CSi with a horrid body kit and wheels? The chancers!

There's an immaculate one for sale at 4 Star Classics in the UK for half that and their stuff is generally overpriced.
 
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TheCracker
£61k for an M635CSi with a horrid body kit and wheels? The chancers!

There's an immaculate one for sale at 4 Star Classics in the UK for half that and their stuff is generally overpriced.
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Yep. Bonkers, even for an '85 Toyota Corona auto. I've seen some owners are asking $6kAUD(when I bought my "granny" '83 manual, for $1k). People are just mad.
 
The front lip is missing, unless that was optional? (disregard the side skirts on that one, I believe they were Silvia/200SX only)
12855d1319055257-nissan-240sx-s14-turbo-shawn-240sx.jpg


It might be worth 13k on a good day. :lol:
 
-Fred-
The front lip is missing, unless that was optional? (disregard the side skirts on that one, I believe they were Silvia/200SX only)
12855d1319055257-nissan-240sx-s14-turbo-shawn-240sx.jpg


It might be worth 13k on a good day. :lol:
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I believe the lip is added on. I remember my friend's '97 240SX didn't have one when he bought it from the original owner.
 
Yeah, I couldn't help but laugh either. Why would the judge care whether an autoshow car was sold either? It makes no sense what so ever.
 
He should have cut giving us the tall stories, put on the original wheels, and just advertised it as a deliver mileage 240sx. All that bull just make people think there's something fishy about it.
 
The backstory is BS.
Why would a display model for auto show be a only a base trim model? It a 97MY and Nissan started making 98MY, why would they need for an auto show? And why was the car in Japan if it was display model for the US market? How did his court cases get settled so quickly, most cases took at least an year before an a decision is made and that is if the defendant doesn't appeal the decision?
 
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For me the deal-breaker is the lack of mahogany display case. As any model car collector knows it's only worth top dollar if you kept the box.
 
The Drive did some research on the 676 mile 240SX.
They can't find any info on the court case. A former Nissan employee said the backstory is a lie. And the owner a mid-sixties old would not give an documents to back his story.
The Drive
Strangely, though, The Drive had no luck finding anything in press clippings or county and state court databases. So we reached out to Brian Collins, the manager of Deluxe Car Storage and the man who's handling the sale, with a few questions. He filled us in on how the car came into his exotic car warehouse—a friend mentioned he knew a guy who was ready to sell some kind of crazy-low-mileage Japanese coupe, and he followed the lead—and confirmed the car's incredible condition inside and out. The man was so intent on maintaining its perfect condition that he built a set of custom ramps that allowed him to store it in his (very accommodating) sister's living room during the winter. The only thing wrong with it, he said, is that it's an automatic.
He allowed that he hadn't seen any documents related to the car's extensive backstory, but he believed it was true ("He would have to have the most vivid imagination ever to make all this up") and offered to connect us to the owner himself, a "real nice guy" named Bruno in his mid-sixties. Collins added that Bruno seemed "very emotional" and had tears in his eyes when he dropped the car off for what could be the last time should it sell. When asked if anyone from Nissan had reached out, he mentioned that a former employee and self-professed 240SX fanatic had emailed him, asking for the VIN so he could run down some more details on what appeared to be a very special car.

It was prescient moment, as it turns out. Less than 10 minutes after hanging up, Collins called us back to say he had just received an alarming set of text messages from the former Nissan employee. The story was likely bogus, the man wrote, as a base-model 240SX would never be used as a show car. The detail about the mahogany crate just made no sense. The VIN didn't line up with the tale, and he questioned why the car has what appears to be a Jaguar badge on the rear instead of the Nissan logo.

And when you stop to think about it, there are a number of apparent gaps in the story. A judge really said "Five of you to fight one honest customer?" to Nissan's lawyers and ordered the company to turn over a valuable display car? The dealership really tried to pass off a muddy-bottomed, flood-damaged 240SX as brand new after the negative publicity of the first case? The whole saga really forced a top executive to resign?

"It's a very strange situation," Collins admitted.

Further muddying the waters is the owner's reaction to all the attention, something you kind of have to expect when selling a six-figure time capsule with a Hollywood-caliber past. After speaking with us the first time but before getting those fateful texts, Collins called him up to let him know The Drive was interested in speaking with him about his story. He was, in Collins's words, "reluctant."

"He goes, 'I don’t want to talk about it. I’m having a hard enough time dealing with getting rid of the thing, you know? I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk about all the legal ****, I don’t want names thrown around.' It was stuff like that," Collins said.

He said he understood, remembering how the guy "had a hard time leaving the building" when he first dropped it off, but the texts from the former Nissan employee added a new layer to Bruno's reticence. When we spoke again on Friday, Collins told us the owner had basically settled on not talking to anyone about the car and passed along a message.

"He’s like, 'Look, you wanna dig around and find the legal stuff for it? Be my guest. I’ll release whatever information you can dig up, but I’m not gonna start unearthing files from the past. And I’m definitely not going to talk about it,'" Collins said. "If the story is not true, this guy has the most vivid imagination ever. If the story is true, it adds a little coolness to the value of the car, but I don’t think it changes the fact that it’s still a 600-mile 240SX."

Collins talks like he's suspicious of the story, but wants like hell for it to be true, and for the "nice guy" he's been dealing with to not turn out to be a liar. And the ads—both on Craigslist and Hemmings—remain live, because as he put it, "none of this changes the fact that it's still a 600-mile 240SX." He's also not sure that the former Nissan guy is as connected as he says he is, having never met him in real life.

There is one more avenue that might yield some information, of course: Nissan itself. But alas, after repeated requests, the company emailed The Drive a short statement declining to comment.

So at the end, we're simply left with more questions than answers—the biggest one being, is a 676-mile 1997 Nissan 240SX worth $100,000? Depends on if you want to believe.
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The Drive
 
Ha! Totally missed the Jaguar badge but it’s right there on the back.

The guy selling says "none of this changes the fact that it's still a 600-mile 240SX" yet a very brief google search reveals how easy it is to roll the tach back on the S14s, so I wouldn't trust that either given the absolutely ridiculous story the owner has come up with.
 
boiltheocean
The guy selling says "none of this changes the fact that it's still a 600-mile 240SX" yet a very brief google search reveals how easy it is to roll the tach back on the S14s, so I wouldn't trust that either given the absolutely ridiculous story the owner has come up with.
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The tell tale would be whether the acclaimed sparkplugs and other things are in fact original.
 

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