Im not taking sides, but heres a clue of my opinion

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjfVwSWtSxE

 

I'd take one. Or even two!

Think of all the first-gens I could buy after I sold them!



Seriously, though... I have as much respect for fine engineering as the next man... but I don't see how walking into a dealership and plunking down X number of dollars for anything gains someone bragging rights.

I mean, I put out a quarter mil for my house... but I didn't build the damn thing. I'm more proud of the stuff I've done to it with my own hands, even though it only totals something like 4% of its value.

Mad props to the engineers and builders. Likewise to the skills of guys who can drive em properly, maintain them masterfully, wrench or modify them with skill, or keep em going for decades past the manufacturer's intentions ... but just for buying it? Not so much.

My take, anyway.

Id'a moved my car if the owner of the shop wanted to set up a shoot... but not out of any sense of inferiority.

 

SO much ignorance. Do you know how many great cars you exclude by being a completely biased Rotard? I love my rotary but it has its place. OMG you're so stupid, there are plenty of people out there who hate us rotary drivers and ignorant rotary ***** that go around making proofless claims like you just reek of ignorance. You're narrowing down to a group of 15 or so vehicles, all made by the same company, all with the same weaknesses, and all cheap little zippy but far from fast cars.

Stu And Ray, even if the GTR has huge downfalls, you're still comparing two completely different forms of automotive joy. It's just NOT the same. The GTR is an overall better car in all the technical aspects. Simply put, end of story. You can build an FB as fast, but you'll never match the MPG, and daily drivable characteristics if you do. Your biased eyes will say you look better but the general automotive community will laugh. I mean, your FB may give you more pleaser than a GTR would, and more pride, but it is not a better car. And it never will be. I'm sorry. It's really easy for you to talk down on the car for lack of a third pedal, a car that'll partially drive itself, but given the chance in person with keys dangling in front of you, you'd have to be mental to refuse a drive in what is basically a rocket for the road.

Ray, you missed the price point entirely. If soemthing has a higher price, it means more people are willing to pay a greater ammonut of money. Sheer statistics and public value don't lie. If the enthusiasts with the money to make those kinds of choices are picking the GTR, there is probably a good list of reasons.

I am far from a GTR fanboy, and there are sooo many things I hate about it, but seriously, everyone is going into a "holier-than-though" mentality where they're putting a road legal go-kart on a pedestal above some real champions. I know this is an RX-7 forum and all, but I didn't realize how mad it has driven the lot of you.

 

 

I intend to have a million dollars in my RRSP when I retire. One big reason, aside from living off of it of course, is so I can buy some exotic supercar that I will never be able to afford until then. Between now and then I'll probably have owned a handful of rotary powered cars, but that doesn't mean I, just like GTR owners, won't want to show off what they have earned. They were able to buy and maintain a car like that because they work for it. Nothing wrong with that. I would have chosen an M3, but that's just me.

 

i would have chosen an m6 or viper or corvette

 

^Problem with giving respect to the GTR is this:

Thunk has some thought that's gone into his car and hes modified it. Anyone with money and no knowledge of cars at all can go out and buy a GTR....what's the respect for?

And for those saying "Oh yeah well the GTR costs like 10x more than that car, so it should get the spot" ...dude. It's a car meet. For car enthusiasts that like to work on their cars as well as drive them. I can borrow daddy's Porsche and drive it to a car meet..guess what? Doesn't mean I deserve a spot over someone with e $4k car that doesn't look half bad and has a ton of work done to it.

What the shop owner says goes though.

 

one of the "M3" owners gave me props about the fb, which was cool. he's building a 240z for autox.

wish i had the kind of money he had though..

this is his bmw..

 

by boss has the 4 door one. and allso he has the Ford F-150 harly, 08 mustang and some other cars i think but allso he got 15mill from the lotto

 

You act like having over $78k to spend on a car isn't respectable. It may not be the SAME kind of work you did to build your car, but I'mm willing to bet some work or a properly placed smart decision here or there was involved.

Also, I wasn't talking about respecting the car, having to move for anything because of a respect thing is stupid, shop owner makes sense. I was simply having a problem with people typing about how much the GTR sucks when they, quite frankly drive a first gen Rx-7. Nothing wrong with the first gen, just doesn't give one a whole lot of room to start dissing an affordable super car.

 

true.. most first gens wouldn't even come close to the speed of a GTR

 

Do those GTR's have that problem with the sticking accelerators that a lot of the new cars coming out of Japan have? Man that could be a mess.

 

ray, i heard that's actually only for n. american made cars..

 

Recall was just expanded to China today, so probably not on limited to N. Am production. Sounds more like a design issue with a common component used in a lot of their cars regardless of where they were made.

Money in and of itself (or ownership of expensive things, basically the same thing) doesn't command any respect from me, no. It says nothing about the person beyond the fact that they (often temporarily) have or had that much purchasing power.

Why respect someone who has money, just because they have money? You've not idea how they got it. Could be anything from the result of years of effort and saving, or of highly skilled, imaginative, or insightful work (worthy of a good deal of respect) to having inherited it from a rich uncle or winning the lottery (basically saying, got it by accident, through no worth of their own) to having ripped off their company, cheated it out of someone else, robbed a bank, sold drugs, pimped children, or killed innocents for it.

Money doesn't 'care' who controls it; it has no ethos. If can be possessed by anyone for any number of reasons. It's 'the great neutral.' It's not by itself evil, but it's not by itself good, either. It's simply useful. It serves the intentions of the hero and the villain equally.

My respect is ultimately reserved for people who are worthy of respect based on their character, ability, and actions.

I can respect a powerful, beautiful, or capable machine as the expression of the skill of its creators and caretakers.

But owning a car earns no more respect, in my mind, than owning a Picasso, or anything else valuable that someone else made.

Again, YMMV. Just how I see things.

 

Well said DD. There may be an exception to the "owning a car earns no respect" rule however.

Seems every person I meet that owns an Old School rotary or an SA or FB is just oozing with integrity and character. Shoot, even some of those FC guys have potential.

Anyway, for more on what the car you drive says about your character, here's a CNNi report that just got started, might tell us something:

http://www.ireport.com/ir-topic-stor...=400141&hpt=C2

 

Owning an electric-converted Geo Metro would earn a lot more respect from me than owning a stock GT-R.

 

i hope you're not dissing geo metros lol

*that's my 50 ish mpg daily haha

 

I just want to put the fact out there that i was at the nissan dealership picking up parts for my work today and I was in the shop and there was a GT-R in there that had a blown engine, I asked the technician what a new engine would cost for that car thinking maybe like 10k or somethin but no....40,000 Dollars!!!! thats completely ridiculous! and you guys were talkin about reliability? this car had 35k miles on it....that doesnt say much for me about that technology....now granted i have no idea about this car's life and how its been treated i just think that is ridiculous, 40k for an engine that goes in a 78k car?

 

Not a chance.

 

That's because constant and long-term exposure to the mechanical excellence embodied in these cars actually, over sufficient time, makes the owner a better person.

Takes decades, though, to reach full potency.

 

How about a compromise?

 

Not a chance. Doesn't even echo the elegance of a 1st gen RX-7.

That blue plastic shell will not provide the constant and long-term exposure to mechanical excellence that an FB provides, which is, after all, what makes us better people, as DD points out.

That blue thing is more GT-R than RX-7 Stu, all fluff and no stuff.

 

It's also hideous.

 

Not hideous, just not a 7.

Take the grill and wing off the back, round out some of those lines, do away with the wheel covers and add a 16X and you'd have the beginnings of a 2012 RX-7. (Also an RB dual tip exhaust in place of that phart cannon would be nice, and maybe some retro taillights).

I'd also have mine painted white, with a hand cranked glass moon roof.

And keep it under 2500 pounds and don't even think about a back seat. And paint the mirrors black. For less than $25,000, 1/3 the price of a GTR.