I was 19 when I joined this forum and got a 2nd gen Rx-7 non turbo. I learned a lot from that car but I messed up a lot too. Nowadays I'd say get a Civic or Miata with a manual to start out. Or get a newer, more reliable car. for $15k you can get a higher mileage 2015+ Mustang with the Ecoboost engine which is a much safer car and faster than an FD with bolt ons and a tune.

I rolled my FC down a hill and hit an F-150 because the brake booster pushrod was misadjusted (by me) had pumped up the brakes temporarily, so I didn't set the parking brake. And I crashed my mom's Kia into another car because I was looking at the radio instead of the road while turning left at a light. Both mistakes were before I had even turned 21. It's just normal dumb stuff you do at that age. That's why insurance is so high.

FD is not a forgiving car. It doesn't have stability control, much less automatic emergency braking or lane departure warning like new cars have today. It's pretty easy to put it into a ditch.

 

yeah i think im just gonna buy a 6k dollar 350z or rx8 and turn it into a hotboi car

 

Cool story, enjoy the Nissan crowd.

 

probably a better idea to have a non Rx7 you can afford to maintain than an Rx7 you can't.

 

Definitely trolled.

 

I bought my second FD here for $13.5k FOB shipped from Japan. In total I've put at least $7k into it since then, and at some point in the next year or two it'll probably need a new engine ($5k + labor). I love FDs and I think they're wonderful cars, but they're a horrible idea if you're trying to stretch your budget to afford one. Additionally, if you don't know what you're doing, and you probably don't if it's your first car, you can cause a lot of expensive damage very easily. These cars don't have a lot of the technical advances made in recent years to protect engines and let you know if something is wrong, so there's less of a safety net than in many other modern cars.

Shipping from Japan isn't as bad as people think, but it will cost you around $3k to the east coast and the process can be confusing, even if you hire someone to take care of it for you. If you can pay the shipper to arrange CIF shipping instead of FOB it'll save you lot of headache on the receiving end. If you hire a broker and pay for shipment from the port, I'd add another $1k depending on your distance from the port. You can basically do it all yourself without a customs broker, but that means traveling to the port, hoping your schedule lines up with the ship and it isn't delayed, and most likely having a truck lined up for transport, since driving it all the way back is a big risk to take (battery will be dead, gas level won't even be enough to get you out of the port, multiple things will probably be broken). I paid less than $100 in taxes and registration fees, but your state might be different and you could be looking at another 10% added to the purchase price. Companies that have JDM FDs in stock might rip you off, but it's probably less than it seems once you add in all the extra fees you'd pay by doing it on your own (probably $4k-5k total).

This is also a horrible time in your life to dump all of your money into a car. It's way more fun to buy something cheap and thrash it on the track without worrying about not having enough money to buy new brakes and tires or repair stuff when it breaks. You're also less likely to kill yourself as you ease into driving cars fast.