I'm buying an FC from my friend's dad. The price is already settled on, but I wanted to see how the forum's valuation of the car compares to my own. the car has some unusual circumstance to it that makes it hard to use other cars of the same year/model to gauge by.

-'86 Base luxury model.

-Owned by Mazda Master Tech of 25 years (actually he is higher than a Master Tech becuase when new products come out, he is trained first on them and then he goes around to other dealerships and trains the other Master Techs.)

-Body has 103k on it.

-Transmission has been replaced for the heck of it with lower-mileage trans he happened to find in the U-pull-it yards.

-He installed a low-mileage LSD

-Here's the big deal...The car sat for 3 years and it ruined the motor so he bought a NEW, not a reman, but a new engine from Mazda and installed it 16k ago. He was one of 11 people to get actual new engines becuase the reman program was out of motors at that time so they sent 11 completely new engines over from Japan and he got one.

-Body has some fading on the sunroof, a few door dings, and some minor rust on the rear wheel-wells.

-The car has been gone through front to back and made PERFECT in every way, mechanically. He is a perfectionist to the point of obsession and the car is PERFECT mechanically.

-Interior is MINT aside from a small tear in driver's side bolster, as tends to happen.

He's basically gifting it to me price-wise becuase I'm his kid's friend and he knows I'm a mazda nut and a perfectionist who will keep the car up properly, as opposed to being a ricer/drifter wannabe who will ruin it inside of 3 weeks. I am very thankful.

What would a car of this description be worth to you?

 

well...it's still an NA and it's s4...I'd say $2500

 

A new rebuild alone will cost around 2k, let alone a new engine. And it's alredy broken in! lol.

I'd say a good 3k but then again price is subjective.

 

Yeah, agreed. Price on this kind of thing is totally subjective. If you tried to resell it, you'd be in the $2500 neighborhood or lower depending on how bad the rust is. Since you know the history and the previous owner, it may be worth more to you. Sounds like a nice find anyway.

 

If its the luxury edidtion , assuming 5 bolt and very well kept.

I would say its worth more in the $ 4 000 . ( yes I know you can get a good T2 for that, but I think by the sounds of it , it seems the car is very well taken care of and the new parts make it worth in price. )

Well I would pay that much atleast if it was in the condition you describe.

 

It's actually a Luxury Base. Meaning strangely, it's a 4-lug car with manual steering and roll up windows, but has AC and a power moon roof.

 

highly dependent on local market conditions but i'd say $2500 is about right.

take it from someone who had a very clean 2nd gen... nonturbos aren't worth anything. don't even think in terms of the value of the car

 

$500...
It's still not a turbo.


-Ted

 

i paid 1800 for my s4 beater, here in the bay area that car could easily go for over 5k if everything is actually as nice as described. can we get some pics so we can oogle this clean *** fc??

 

+1 for pic request

 

I never said it was clean on the outside; it's the mechanical stuff that's pristine. It really does drive like new.

The car came with $3,400 worth of reciepts for parts put into it during the previous ownership. I also have the original window sticker and a bunch of other paper-work.

 

Two years ago? It was worth 1200... Now with all the stupid insane overpricing jack up BS.. It's probably worth 2200.

 

Knowing what I know, I would give maybe a grand for it because NA's aren't a good investment...but for someone wanting to buy a car and drive it without doing mods or maintenance, then maybe 2500.

 

Its an SE = Base model...not a luxury model so i wouldnt pay over $1500 and thats only because of the so called new motor....if it was a GTU maybe closer to $2000 and if it was a GXL well then i would go as high as $2600.....

NAs arent a good investment?? LOL

 

actually there was an early 4 lug model called "luxury" even though it was not a GXL etc. There was no sticker or identification of this on the car, but the window sticker did identify it as such.

And no, NA's are not a good investment in most cases...series 4's especially. You buy a rough/fair turbo II and bring it home, you can take it apart in 2 days and make 2 grand or more off it, or you can fix it and resell it for 3-4 grand. You buy a series 4 NA in the same condition and you can part it out for maybe 400 bucks, or you can resell it for maybe a couple hundred more than you paid, because the market is SO flooded with s4 NA cars and parts it is not funny.

Now again...if a man wants this as his first 7, or a clean daily driver that you don't have to do a week's worth of maintenance to in order to feel safe in, then I can fully understand paying 2500 for the car...but unless fairly clean FC's are extremely rare in your part of the country there's no way to justify more.

I've bought cars that clean around here for 800 or 1000 bucks in running condition, and half that when the owner flooded the engine and thought it was blown. That's how I started into the rotary repair world...called about an ad in the paper, took a chain, looked at the car and realized it was probably not blown, pulled it until it started, drove it home, cleaned it up, sold it for quadruple what I paid the same weekend.

 

It is the "luxury" model that RotaryResurrection mentioned, and I happen to have the receipt for the motor. It's not "so-called" (wtf?), it IS a new motor. And no it's not a reman.

I bought the car from a Mazda Master Tech, as I mentioned, who has kept the car up meticulously. It's got several improvements done to it (like the LSD) and it's not the same as any random S4 you might see that has no service record and which might be full of "suprises". Everything single thing on the car works perfectly and it drives like new.

 

it's not his first 7, he has a fd that you can spot in the bg of one pic

 

damn i thought that was a Ford...

and no where in the 12 sales brouchures ( canadian, Austrailian and US) i have does it mention a base Luxury model..sounds like a dealer type up!!

 

I wasn't saying him particularly..."if a man..."

 

The Base "Luxury" is an option package. When you selected it you ended up with a Base model which had crank windows and manual steering, but also and strangely, power mirrors, power sunroof, and A/C. It's noted on my window sticker.

 

DAMN!!! Thats a pretty meticulous S4. I'd say $2,500-$3,000 based on local market value. S5 N/A's aren't going for much less than $4,000 around here.

 

this forum is the wrong place to ask, especially if you are asking how much it is worth in terms of selling price. because you have some people that are just cheap, and then other people who think these cars are not worth hardly anything because if you get lucky you can get a rediculously low priced example of these cars. and then other people just don't care to give you a straight answer.

i kind of regret keeping my car in good condition, replacing so many things with new parts, and spending money on it in general because if i go to sell it now i will just be throwing my money away. these things are never an investment but it would be nice to see at least some minimization of losses for the effort.

also for whatever reason the depreciation on these cars is the worse of any car i have seen, at least of any imported sports car. if you look at how much these sold for new, and then realize how much you can get a good running one now, it's kind of nuts.

by the way, i think the car is worth the highest value someone has posted here so far. seriously in reality it's as much as someone would be willing to pay...

 

Well if I KNEW it was in perfect shape mechanically and would never have to worry about it breaking I would pay $2500-$3000.

If I had bought that same car from any other Joe Schmoe I'd pay no more than $1500.

 

OK, the BIG question is... What did you actually pay for it?

 

2500 sounds good to me. I payed 900 for my 88 GTU, and it was a rough body, no rust, inside wasn't grand either...but everything could have been easily fixed...*A black paint job, a a good clean on the interior with new seats...* But hell, I'd rather get a TII :p