Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
MIKE SPINELLI: Hey, welcome to Road Testament.
Today is the last installment of Best
Used Cars in the World.
That's $20,000, the top class.
And obviously for the price of a Toyota Camry-- probably a
little less than a Toyota Camry-- you can get a million
awesome cars.
And to help us decide, we've got Matt Hardigree,
editor-in-chief of Jalopnik.
What's up, Matt?
MATT HARDIGREE: Nothing much.
Excited to be here.
MIKE SPINELLI: Very good.
And also, it's cool that you're here because later
today, we are debuting Jalopnik on Drive.
MATT HARDIGREE: That's right.
Later today, you'll all be watching.
You'll watching this show.
You'll be watching that show simultaneously--
two screens open.
If you run it backwards, actually, this show, it'll
play Pink Floyd over the other show.
Important to know.
MIKE SPINELLI: Perfectly synced up with
Dark Side of the Moon.
MATT HARDIGREE: Exactly.
MIKE SPINELLI: Or what was that other one?
MATT HARDIGREE: The Wall?
MIKE SPINELLI: The Wall.
Anyway, so we don't run this show four hours because this
is the hardest one to do.
There's so many cars for $20,000, no matter what
currency you're buying in, that I had to actually break
this down into five categories to follow.
Just so we could actually frame this in a way that might
be interesting to figure out.
So here are the categories we're going to follow.
Late model boy racer, and obviously that's
your STIs and Evos.
Also some other cool stuff in there that we'll talk about--
R32s and some Saabs.
We'll ask Mr. Saab a little later about that one.
Late model V8 fight club, obviously your Mustangs, your
Corvettes, your GTOs.
German motoring instrument--
that's your BMW, your 3 Series.
Probably E46 and your Audi.
MATT HARDIGREE: Or you can get an E39 M5.
MIKE SPINELLI: Yeah.
Although E39 M5 I was going to put in highly depreciated
luxury bruiser.
MATT HARDIGREE: That's true.
That's a good one.
MIKE SPINELLI: So you have your AMG iron in there and you
have, probably, your E39 M5.
And also just your awesome classics.
So maybe you could find a Bentley Turbo R.
MATT HARDIGREE: You could, or a Ferrari Mondial.
MIKE SPINELLI: Right.
Or a Barracuda, like a '66.
MATT HARDIGREE: Maybe a bad one.
MIKE SPINELLI: Yeah, well, probably not
the greatest shape.
Anyway, so let's go with late model boy racer.
What do you got?
MATT HARDIGREE: I'm going to probably go with an STI.
There was a year there where Subaru screwed up and made
actually the regular WRX faster than the STI.
And then they reversed it the next year and made the STI
faster again.
So it's 2008, 2009.
So if you get a 2008 WRX, you're actually coming in
cheaper than a 2009 STI, or a 2009--
some people in the comments might correct me.
I might have this backwards-- but I think it's 2008 WRX.
Pretend you're Colin McRae.
You're a rally driver.
Pretend you're Ken Block before he got mad Ford
sponsorship.
There's so much you can do with that car.
It's great to drive.
I took one out on a gravel trap and just hooned
the crap out of it.
And it kept going.
It stood up.
It's a great deal and it doesn't really-- an Evo sounds
great but you're that guy who owns an Evo.
And if you own a WRX, you could be that guy who wears
North Face clothing and all that.
So there's another way to go.
MIKE SPINELLI: All right.
And it's funny you should say that because I was going to
say, you go with the STI if you happen to want to drive
gravel stages once in a while.
But I'm totally going with Evo.
And the reason I'm going with Evo is just because I just
think it's a more bat [BLEEP]
kind of experience.
The Evo has always been a little bit
more wild and crazy.
It's always felt a little bit more on the edge.
And I mean up to IX.
I'm not talking about the X. I'm just looking at the IX MR.
I don't know if the MRs are in the $20,000--
I think they might be a little more than that.
MATT HARDIGREE: Well, you might get a deal because the
original MRs are so stripped down.
Do they even have air conditioning?
I don't--
MIKE SPINELLI: I think so, but I'm not positive.
MATT HARDIGREE: That's a really stripped down car.
That's a car you get if you hate your girlfriend and you
hate your parents and your neighbors.
You buy an Evo MR. And you're like, screw you guys.
You wear a flat bill energy drink cap.
MIKE SPINELLI: All right, check please.
I'll see you guys later.
You're right.
Culturally, it's the same.
There's another problem further down on the list that
we'll talk about like that, too, a cultural problem.
I'm kind of OK with going with the Evo, only just because
it's just madcap.
MATT HARDIGREE: It is.
No, it is almost the craziest car you can buy in this whole
list that we're going to go through.
For the money, but also, it's terrible.
MIKE SPINELLI: You almost have to wear a
great suit every day.
And I'd probably have to--
I don't want to be like *** long hair Evo guy.
MATT HARDIGREE: You can't, yeah.
MIKE SPINELLI: Problems, problems, problems.
Anyway, so that's cool.
But also in this category R32s?
MATT HARDIGREE: R32 is good, and that's
actually a good deal.
Because the new Golf R drops the VR6 motor for the Turbo 4,
which is nice in a way and better for the environment.
But the VR6, if batshit is what you want, too, makes it a
lot more fun, that motor.
MIKE SPINELLI: I wonder if, because the VR6 had such a
following, whether the prices of the VR6 ones
are going to go up.
MATT HARDIGREE: They're probably going to go up.
MIKE SPINELLI: Now that you can't get them.
But the great thing about those is that they've held
their value so well over the course of eight years almost
now that they've been around.
MATT HARDIGREE: It's a while.
MIKE SPINELLI: First generation, second generation.
MATT HARDIGREE: And a lot of them have gone into trees
because there's so much motor up front that people try to
drive them fast and have destroyed them.
MIKE SPINELLI: They tend to vector in a straight line.
But there's also--
actually Ian, Mr. Saab?
IAN: Turbo X, 9-3.
MIKE SPINELLI: The Saab 9-3 Turbo X, which I totally
forgot about.
How many horsepower?
IAN: About 280, front all-wheel drive.
They're only in black and kind of rare.
But you can get it and it has cool sports interior and sport
suspension.
MATT HARDIGREE: It's a great car.
I hear the clutches go out easily on that car.
I think you might have some trouble with that.
Watch that.
MIKE SPINELLI: They burn up?
MATT HARDIGREE: They burn up really quickly.
And if you're a Jalopnik and you accidentally burn up the
only car in America that's a Turbo X, wasn't me.
But that happened.
The Turbo X is great.
I would totally rock a Turbo X. And there would be four
people on the road who would get that as
you drove by, a year.
And those four people would be so happy.
MIKE SPINELLI: They would cheer.
When you try to get it serviced, you'd have to--
the good thing about that car is it's like you have to be
self sufficient.
You'd have to be like the Cubans with the American cars.
You'd be putting, like, a diesel Lada engine in after a
couple of years.
IAN: The Saab parts business is ramping up again.
MIKE SPINELLI: There you go, Ian.
So Mr. Saab chiming in.
Thanks very much.
MATT HARDIGREE: Invest in Saab parts.
MIKE SPINELLI: Really, if you want to know anything about
Saabs, maybe we'll do a Saab show with Ian one day.
IAN: All right.
MIKE SPINELLI: Cool.
So that's the first category.
Second, late model V8 fight club.
I'm just going to go straight out.
And it's a little bit more than $20,000 right now, but
the last gen of the latest model GTO.
The 6 liter LS2 one.
Just because independent rear--
I did actually write the pros and cons.
Independent rear, 400 horsepower, of
course, always good.
Handles great for a muscle--
probably the best-handling muscle car of its time.
MATT HARDIGREE: It's almost a Corvette, yeah.
It's right there.
And do we really have anything comparable to that now?
We have the CTS-V, but that's another class.
MIKE SPINELLI: Maybe the Camaro.
Camaro's sort of similar.
They both came out of Australia.
MATT HARDIGREE: They're both Zeta platform--
or proto-Zeta.
MIKE SPINELLI: Yeah, right.
The GTO was from that Matilda concept.
The cool thing about that is you could badge it as a Holden
Monaro, or is it "Mo-nair-o"?
It's "Mo-nair-o" if you're in Long Island.
You could get all the Australian badges and just
sort of drive around on a left-hand drive version of an
Australian car.
So that's kind of cool.
MATT HARDIGREE: That's cool.
But if you're going to do that, I would just say just go
full-on Monaro, convert it to like an El Camino Ute SS.
The problem with that car is there are only two colors of
that car you ever see.
Red, which is so loud.
It's such an over-compensating color.
I love the car.
I would totally buy one and just paint it black.
Because the blacks that you see are just gorgeous cars.
Or [BLEEP]
magnet yellow.
I could not drive a PMY GTO.
MIKE SPINELLI: It's hard to do.
And the problem is that then they have the seats with the
yellow trim.
Like if it's blue, it's got the blue trim.
I mean, they're not exactly the most tasteful cars.
And the problem is that the design is
actually kind of bland.
It's very jelly bean-y.
it's very dated looking because it has that sort of
straight wind-tunnel jelly-bean look.
MATT HARDIGREE: Yeah, it's a huge greenhouse.
It's like the Biodome.
You could live underneath there and grow your own food
and be self-sufficient underneath the roof of a GTO.
Which is good, though, because visibility is great.
All these new cars, you're up.
And they're really high belt line.
I'll take really good visibility and the con being
looking bad.
MIKE SPINELLI: I thought you were going to say, I'll take
great visibility for 800, Alex.
MATT HARDIGREE: I'll take it.
MIKE SPINELLI: Another con for that car is you need a shift
kit because shifting is in the next state.
Another pro is that they're ridiculously tunable, so you
can get all kinds of stuff for them.
So if you want a muscle car you can take to the track,
probably not cost a whole lot to get it track worthy.
If you have a little bit more than the $20,000,
I'd say go with that.
MATT HARDIGREE: I'm going the complete opposite direction.
I'm going to say--
not going to handle quite as well.
I'm going to say Bullitt GT, Last-generation Bullitt GT--
those prices are starting to come down.
First-generation Bullitt GT is OK, too.
The second generation is fantastic, actually.
The newer Mustang GT before the 5.0 was really just the
Bullitt Mustang all tweaked.
They took all those tweaks and they ported them
over to the new GT.
And it's great.
The Bullitt Mustang looks fantastic.
The second generation of it, they dropped the
goofy fake gas cap.
The exhaust, huge 3.5-inch tips.
It's designed to sound like the original 390 that was in
the Bullitt Mustang.
It's super fun to drive.
On the inside, it's kind of cartoonish.
It has a big cartoonish shift ***.
It's like an 8 Ball, but an aluminum 8 Ball, which is
actually a great thing.
Aluminum 8 Ball was actually the name
of my band in college.
It was a punk reggae band.
And it looks great.
And when you see it, you know that it's a Bullitt car but it
doesn't scream.
It's great to drive.
I took it out on a track.
I took it actually at Hennessey's track, his little
quarter mile back there.
And you could just all day long stomp on it--
fantastic, wonderful car.
Actually talking about value, you can't get a GT500 in the
$20,000 price range.
You can't get close to it.
But some of those GT500 accents, at least
stylistically and on the interior, came down from the
GT500 to the Bullitt.
So it's great.
And you can pretend you're Steve McQueen.
And you can pretend you're Steve McQueen in a socially
responsible way because Steve McQueen
couldn't exist anymore.
Because he would have a Twitter account.
And he would have to go on Oprah because he beats his
wife and is addicted to drugs.
MIKE SPINELLI: Yeah, but that's the way.
You could do the reverse burnouts and still look cool.
MATT HARDIGREE: Absolutely.
MIKE SPINELLI: Cool.
No, I'm down.
And just as an alternate, I'm going to throw in the previous
gen Mustang SVT Cobra.
And just throw that in as a tossup.
MATT HARDIGREE: If you can get a mystic paint
job one, even better.
MIKE SPINELLI: I thought you were going
to say mystic pizza.
German motoring instrument-- all right.
So basically, this is the M3 verses S4 debate.
So obviously, if you're going to ever go on a race track,
you get the E46 M3.
Basically, you buy the best M3 you can get for $20,000.
And if it's an E36 top with 30,000 miles on it,
maybe that's it.
But basically, you want the E46.
MATT HARDIGREE: Yeah, it's hard to argue.
There's nothing else in that class that was as good.
I'll take S4.
S4 is great.
But you hope you get it for $10,000 so you can spend
another $10,000 to keep it on the road.
Because it's just such a terrible generation of car.
MIKE SPINELLI: Well, the good thing--
so the 4.2-liter V8 in the Audi is probably the
best-sounding engine ever, ever made.
MATT HARDIGREE: Amazing.
MIKE SPINELLI: The other good thing is if you have a fiancee
whose parents you have to drive around once in a while,
you get the Audi.
Because if you pull up with the M3, you might as well just
scream, I met your daughter at a *** cruise.
MATT HARDIGREE: And I banged her on the first
date, in that car.
S4 said that I waited two dates, three dates, took her
out to a nice dinner.
MIKE SPINELLI: I banged her in the head on the *** cruise.
I mean, a head on the boat, you know, a head, like--
anyway, moving on.
MATT HARDIGREE: I think it just wins this
round straight out.
If you're meeting girls on a *** cruise, you might as
well have the car to match.
MIKE SPINELLI: Exactly.
Highly depreciated luxury bruiser.
So this is where the highly depreciated AMG cars come in.
Because basically, you can have a $120,000 Mercedes AMG
tuner for $20,000 right now.
I wouldn't want to go and have to do a lot of work to it,
because then you might be paying another
$20,000 every year.
MATT HARDIGREE: Well, it's like the old saying, the most
expensive car in the world is a cheap Mercedes.
MIKE SPINELLI: Exactly.
So that's the thing.
But I do see a lot of people driving around in $20,000 AMGs
because you can get them and they're awesome.
Yeah, they're automatic.
But I mean, if you travel long distances, if you just want a
German muscle car, that's awesome.
Yeah, you get mostly--
I guess in the $20,000 range, it's the compressor one.
It's the E55s, the 55 ones.
But the competitor to this, though, is the perpetual
winner of almost everything we ever do.
And what is it?
Because your XI, I think that's your pick.
MATT HARDIGREE: I was going to say Bentley Turbo R. Crap, I'm
going to totally mix it up.
I know where you're going, but I'm zagging.
I am the Catera.
I am the Caddy that zigs or zags or whatever.
MIKE SPINELLI: Why?
I thought you were going to say a BMW E39 M5.
MATT HARDIGREE: Oh, well, OK.
Yeah, I'm going to move Bentley down
here to awesome classic.
It's not really classic, but we're going to
just screw with it.
E39--
best-looking pre-Bangle BMW that exists.
It's before all of that flame-surfacing crap.
It is cool, it is cold, it handles extremely well.
It is the super sports sedan that we all grew up loving.
And it looks great.
And they're everywhere.
And they apparently hold up pretty well.
Because I live in a small town and it is full of E39 M5s.
And here's the trick, though.
If you want to save your money, don't buy the E39 M5.
Buy the 540--
same engine, six speed, which you can find with the M
package, looks almost as good.
It's like $3,000 or $4,000 cheaper.
MIKE SPINELLI: I didn't coach him.
I swear I didn't coach him.
We did this last week.
MATT HARDIGREE: Really?
MIKE SPINELLI: That was the $10,000 pick because you can
actually get those cheaper than $20,000.
MATT HARDIGREE: You can get those cheaper than $20,000.
MIKE SPINELLI: And you, my friend--
this is why we are like this.
MATT HARDIGREE: Brothers from another mother.
MIKE SPINELLI: Yes, last week that was exactly the thing
that we were talking about.
MATT HARDIGREE: You can get the wagon, too.
MIKE SPINELLI: See, that's another thing.
So you can get one of those.
So if you even want to go better than that, you want to
spend the $20,000 and get one of those with particularly low
mileage, then we're talking some cool [BLEEP].
MATT HARDIGREE: That's the way to do it.
I would totally hop in that car.
MIKE SPINELLI: All right, cool.
So we missed one from back up here, but quickly.
Remember last week, we talked about the 944 Turbo.
MATT HARDIGREE: The 944 Turbo--
you can get a nice 944 Turbo, some crazy S2 whatever.
You can get the world's nicest 944 Turbo for $20,000.
MIKE SPINELLI: So we figured, yeah, let's push that back
into $20,000.
Just because if you find one for $20,000,
it's going to be awesome.
MATT HARDIGREE: Concours quality.
MIKE SPINELLI: Concours quality.
Where are we?
MATT HARDIGREE: I want to talk about the Bentley, though.
MIKE SPINELLI: Where are you putting it, here?
MATT HARDIGREE: I'm going to still put it here.
Forget AMG, forget BMW M. Bentley even now does not
really have a performance arm.
They have super sports, they have speed, but they don't
really have a name for it.
So if you go back further, the Bentley Turbo R--
I swear I've seen these for under $20,000.
Look on Craigslist, post the links in the
comments to what you find.
There are Turbo Rs out there.
And here's what you get for your $20,000.
You get the steak knives.
You get the rotisserie.
You get a 6.75-liter V8.
Now, here's the great thing about a 6.75-liter V8.
Your extra dollar gets you that hundredth decimal place.
MIKE SPINELLI: That's huge.
MATT HARDIGREE: It has a fraction on it.
Actually, if you look at the engine, this is the only
engine with a fraction on it that is not
portrayed as a decimal.
And it's fantastic.
So they never released numbers on this car because it's so
bat [BLEEP].
MIKE SPINELLI: It's adequate.
MATT HARDIGREE: It's adequate because that's all they said.
But Motor Trend looked into it.
And it was like 500 pound-feet of torque out of this motor.
It is phenomenal.
So people like you would hate on a Bentley because of
reliability.
It would be like, oh, you buy it for $13,000 and spend
another $7,000 to drive it once.
But it's not like an old Lotus.
It's not that bad.
Because if you think about it, the British built this engine
kind of forever.
Because originally they built it for South Africa to fight
in the Boer War.
MIKE SPINELLI: I didn't know that.
MATT HARDIGREE: They did that, and then
they fought the Kaiser--
MIKE SPINELLI: With the same engine?
MATT HARDIGREE: With the same engine.
Then they fought the Nazis with the same engine.
And then the space Nazis, when they came.
I get all my history from movies.
That's the space Nazis next.
And then Argentinians in the Falkland Island War, and
they're still building the engine now.
So great reliability.
$20,000, just buy a Bentley Turbo R.
MIKE SPINELLI: What was it in when they were
fighting the Nazis?
MATT HARDIGREE: It was in a Spitfire.
You think of rotary, radial engines.
They just put two Bentley engines in it.
And it was great.
And you had your chauffeur in the backseat running the guns.
MIKE SPINELLI: Running the guns.
And your scarf just was flowing.
MATT HARDIGREE: It was great, and you're killing Nazis.
MIKE SPINELLI: That's awesome.
OK, Turbo R. I'm going with--
awesome classic, right?
We don't have any Ferraris in here.
So I have two choices.
If you want to go absolutely crazy--
first of all, David E Davis, the famous automotive
journalist-- the late David E Davis-- said, everybody, every
man needs to own a V12 in his life.
Paraphrasing--
I don't know what he actually said.
Something like that.
But the V12 to get is a Ferrari V12, obviously.
And the cheapest Ferrari V12 you can get is in a 400i.
Which is the poor relation to most Ferraris because it's
automatic, first of all.
MATT HARDIGREE: It's not only automatic, it's a three-speed
GM automatic.
MIKE SPINELLI: It's a GM automatic, which is the most
ridiculous thing you could think of.
MATT HARDIGREE: Three speeds.
One speed for every four cylinders.
MIKE SPINELLI: Exactly.
But you are driving a V12 Ferrari.
And I actually really like the design.
MATT HARDIGREE: It looks great.
MIKE SPINELLI: It looks fantastic.
MATT HARDIGREE: It's like Pininfarina but totally sleek
and low key.
I think if you looked at it you wouldn't necessarily jump
to Ferrari.
I think you might think Fiat, Lancia.
There's something else there.
It's cool.
You would not be a poser running around in a 400, which
gets us to our next car, actually.
MIKE SPINELLI: Well, actually, that's true.
But seriously, that car-- you could pull up anywhere and get
out of a Ferrari 400i, and you're awesome.
There is no douchebaggery anywhere near that car, which
is probably maybe the only Ferrari you can say that with.
Where there's absolutely zero douchebaggery involved.
MATT HARDIGREE: The least douchebaggy Ferrari.
We proclaim it here.
The late David E Davis said, if you're not going to look
like a *** in a car, don't look like a *** in
a Ferrari 400.
He's dead so we can put words in his mouth.
MIKE SPINELLI: Funny enough, the least douchebaggy Ferrari
has a GM transmission.
So I put in the other $20,000 Ferrari just
because, you know what?
It's a Ferrari.
The Mondial.
MATT HARDIGREE: Mondial.
Mondial T--
it's that weird engine far in the back and you have all this
extra room.
MIKE SPINELLI: And the metric wheels so you've got to change
them or else you'll never be able to get tires.
MATT HARDIGREE: Absolutely, no.
It's a crazy car to own which is why they're on eBay for--
we just saw one for $19,500.
Buy it now.
You can totally buy it.
Here is why I think you should actually get a Mondial.
The 400 is the classy choice.
You should get a Mondial Quattrovalvole.
Four valves, newer engine-- they fixed some things.
It's about 270 horsepower, so it's not slow.
You're going to get a red one because that's
apparently all they made.
MIKE SPINELLI: Or blue, whatever that
Ferrari blue was.
And you've got to get a coupe.
MATT HARDIGREE: Yeah, not a cabriolet because you don't
want to be like Scent of a Woman.
MIKE SPINELLI: You don't want to be like, hoo-ah.
MATT HARDIGREE: Hoo-ah.
MIKE SPINELLI: Take the wheel.
MATT HARDIGREE: What is that?
MIKE SPINELLI: Sorry.
That's all I got.
MATT HARDIGREE: No, that's a wonderful Pacino impression.
MIKE SPINELLI: I don't know if wonderful is the word.
MATT HARDIGREE: If you've ever been anywhere with a Ferrari
owner, all they do is wear Ferrari clothes--
not all of them.
There's some really great Ferraris out there.
Big love to Glickenhaus.
But there's so many Ferrari owners out there--
they wear the Ferrari shoes and the Ferrari pants and the
windbreaker.
And it's the worst thing in the world.
And a lot of them know they have nice cars.
If you have a 599, you spent a lot of money to wear a lot of
Ferrari gear.
Show up next to that guy in the same outfit, in the same
Ferrari hat autographed by Alonso or some crap, and sit
next to him in a Mondial.
And act like you're the same guy.
Just follow him around all day and be like, us Ferrari
owners, you know how it is.
Oh, going to the shop.
Me and Miffy in our Ferraris.
Just until they just give up.
MIKE SPINELLI: I mean, there's no way that they--
they think you're like the puppy that followed them home
and you're just like this.
No, screw them because you know what?
You have the cooler car.
MATT HARDIGREE: Oh, absolutely.
I see a 599, I look like, oh cool, it's a 599.
Flying buttresses, whatever.
But I see a Mondial and I'm like, that guy.
Actually, I was at a Cars and Coffee and
there was one there.
And so I was like, dude.
It was next to a Lamborghini and it was
just like, screw it.
Mondial.
MIKE SPINELLI: Here I am, that's right.
The cool thing about the Mondial is that it's the least
pretentious thing you could have.
You pull up.
It's just like you're pulling up in an
old Duster or something.
It's like, oh cool, a Duster.
It's the Duster of Ferraris.
MATT HARDIGREE: Makes perfect sense.
The late David E Davis.
MIKE SPINELLI: Yes, thank you.
Says David E Davis.
I think that's it.
That's it for us.
We're out of numbers.
And that is Road Testament.
That's the end of our Best Used Cars in the World.
And thank you for being part of it.
Matt Hardigree, editor-in-chief of Jalopnik.
And we will see you next week.
And in a couple of weeks, we're taking a hiatus to
rebuild our set.
Because this set is a little grim, as you've said.
We're actually going do some cool stuff.
And also later today, watch Jalopnik TV.
It's up.
MATT HARDIGREE: Yeah, Jalopnik on Drive.
It's going to be awesome.
MIKE SPINELLI: Did I say Jalopnik TV?
MATT HARDIGREE: You did.
MIKE SPINELLI: It's all right.
Jalopnik on Drive.
It's not TV, it's MTV.
See you later.
[THEME MUSIC PLAYING]