Good afternoon, guys and gals. I'm Stephen, and I will "officially" become an adult at the end of this month. I've decided to join here as I've pretty much made my mind up on what my first car is going to be - go on, have a guess :P

 

However, I'm not planning to buy a 300ZX just yet, as I'm still waiting for my provisional license and I want to learn driving in a basic car first, before I can move up a gear (no pun intended). I'll update you all on when my provisional gets delivered.

 

Have a nice evening.

Welcome to the club mate :)

 

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Welcome Stephen and enjoy the forum. You will get all the info you need on the 300zx here.

Welcome to the club mate

Hi Stephen. First car.....I really wouldn't want to pay your insurance bill. If you really really want a z32 then buy one as a long term project, then it will be ready for you when you can access cheaper insurance. Not to mention this is a 20~25 year old car I and many others have had them as a daily driver, running one as a daily is not cheap, wear and tear as well as fuel.

 

You've picked a great car to buy but I think you need to be sensible about the bigger picture. You may be loaded some young people are, at which point I'd recommend you buy a nice new hatch as a daily and enjoy the zed as a special toy.

Welcome to the club :thumbup:

Welcome to the club Stephen....:thumbup:

Hi and welcome,

If you need any help with insurance at all when you're ready please feel free to drop me a line.

Regards,

Dan.

Hi and welcome,

If you need any help with insurance at all when you're ready please feel free to drop me a line.

Regards,

Dan.

Heya, Dan. For insurance I've been inclined towards telematics, as I've found out that I can get a lower premium (if I drive decently, of course). Plus, that little black box you get acts as a tracker as well so that will put me at great ease. Moneywise, I've got nearly £2500 in savings and I get roughly £5000 every year from allowances (I have slightly severe Asperger's Syndrome :/ ), so I guess I'm ok. Most new hatches are like well over £8000, but this 300ZX I found is selling for roughly £3000, and I reckon I can get it lowered to at least £2500, if not, less - the guy who's selling it has noted that the turbos are slightly smoking, and based on where they're located in the engine I would have to fork out a few hundred to replace the turbo seals or even rebuild the turbos entirely (yes, I'm hoping to get a twin turbo 300ZX - definitely not the best idea, but I'll try to keep crashes at a minimum. :P

 

Interesting fact: when I went with my family to drop my mum off with her mate at Southend, I saw a red 300ZX passing by. It sounded good...

I don't know what to advise here Stephen, half of me is really sensible and half of me bought a 300zx :lol:

 

I want to say don't do it, it will cost a lot of money, even if you are a natural and skilled driver they have a learning curve like the side of the Shard and provide a LOT of rope to hang yourself with.

 

The other part of me wants to say, petrol prices are only going one way, life is short, you should do what you want to do.

 

On ballance Stephen, coming from someone who bought a 2.8 capri at 19 and on a daily basis alternates between cringing at the grief it caused me and smiling hard at how awesome a time I had... I don't think you should buy a Twin Turbo, perhaps an NA wouldn't be as bad but a TT definitely has potential to empty your bank account and get you into trouble.

 

If you weren't so far away mate I would show you my car, the fact that most of the engine is in the passenger footwell should hopefully scare you off :wink:

 

I had a Citroen AX as a first car and it was amazing, not because it was a good car, just because it was my car, my first car and changed my life forever. :clover:

If you weren't so far away mate I would show you my car, the fact that most of the engine is in the passenger footwell should hopefully scare you off :wink:

 

I had a Citroen AX as a first car and it was amazing, not because it was a good car, just because it was my car, my first car and changed my life forever. :clover:

Don't worry, the car that I'm interested in is in Milton Keynes, which is like 2 hours away from me - I'm hopefully gonna have a look at it with my dad in late December/early January, depending if dad's ok with being jealous of his son having a more powerful car :sweatdrop: (probably won't happen, but it won't hurt to try)

Good afternoon, guys and gals. I'm Stephen, and I will "officially" become an adult at the end of this month.

Just to clarify this bit - I'm currently 17 but will be turning 18 at the end of this month. When I get hold of my provisional license, I'll make sure to get everything done, including the Pass Plus course so I can be a little bit more confident about driving on motorways and such.

Mate a zed is a difficult car to own. I would only advise one as a second car, mine was a daily driver for about 7 months and it was expensive. Fortunately I could afford it but it was cheaper to run a second car than simply a zed alone, I hated putting a lot of miles on the car and oil changes every 1000/2000 miles meant I was doing it monthly.

 

I don't want you to think I have a downer on the whole idea, but I would reccomend buying one as a second car. Something like a mk1 mx5 for a grand as well as a £2000 NA is a better idea than buying a twin turbo alone, or a new hyundai i10 or a vw fox or whatever.

 

All of these things the mx5 would be a lot better than the zed.

-short journeys

-fuel economy

-insurance and service costs

-parking (a zed is quite a big car)

-driving in the wet and snow

 

It would save you over a year at least the £1000 it cost to buy, that money could go into the zed, you would learn a lot about your zed and it would be all the more rewarding for it having worked on the car. The mx5 would teach you a bit about rwd without biting you hard, as a zed may during the learning process.

 

If you do simply buy a zed and go for it, I hope you played a lot of Gran Turismo and have plenty of self control. A zed with a soft back tyre or 4 different "nobrand" tyres, or daft camber, or rock hard coilovers as a lot of them have will be a skittery sod come winter time.

If you do simply buy a zed and go for it, I hope you played a lot of Gran Turismo and have plenty of self control. A zed with a soft back tyre or 4 different "nobrand" tyres, or daft camber, or rock hard coilovers as a lot of them have will be a skittery sod come winter time.

I've been playing Juiced quite a bit lately (which funnily enough has the 300ZX in it), and I've had a go at the RWD cars in that; let's just say that the drivetrains are very distinctive - FWD has very precise control, AWD has the best of both worlds (control, drifting - I'm not planning to drift any time soon when I get an actual car), and RWD is pretty sensitive, like when I go to steer it does seem to oversteer, and when I steer too much I end up spinning out, but I'm starting to get the hang of it. Probably ain't really gonna translate to an actual car though, but the game mechanics are actually pretty realistic in terms of how the drivetrains work; only thing that would probably help me a little bit is if I get a racing wheel peripheral set or something.

 

As for short journeys though, I'm going to South Essex College next year, which is roughly 15 miles away from home; I'd be essentially driving 30 miles every day, and I don't think that could be defined as a short journey. However, the college is located right outside the train station, so I really should think about doing comparisons between taking train trips and driving.

Well you seem sensible enough mate but I had to say my piece as I don't want to see you lose money, get hurt or get into bother with the law. I will give you the best case and worst case scenarios for buying a zed.

 

Best case,

 

Adrian flux do you a good deal you buy that (really nice) blue zed tax and insure it for inside £4000. You drive it to college for a year, covering about 4000 miles and average 30 to the gallon, spending 800 quid on fuel and do a service costing 100. So in a year you spend £5000. In the mean time you have an absolute blast driving a stunning car and you smile every time you drive it.

 

Worst case,

I am by no means suggesting you're going to go mad and end up on fire half way up a tree here. You manage to get the zed on the road but leave yourself pretty tight. You love the car (rightly so) but while finding your feet with the car and a busy urban area, with a speedo that goes up to 180mph accidentally do 40 in a 30 and get 3 points, you're then knackered. You go over a nail and need a new tyre at £120 then your water pump lets go... or your clutch goes, or a turbo properly dies. Or you boost up in the wet and skid your tail into a curb and damage your back left alloy coming off a roundabout. You end up having to sell the zed at a loss to get a clio instead.

 

Buy a banger and a zed. That zed is going to be a grand to insure, just sorn it for a year, then you will be able to drive it far more cheaply rather than find yourself tight, unable to enjoy it. Someone else at your college will ding it in the car park.

 

Back me up people or tell me I am wrong.

 

 

Edit.

 

Something like these 2 are what I am thinking

 

http://www.gumtree.com/p/mazda/mazda-mx5-mk1-1990/1088916121

 

http://www.gumtree.com/p/nissan/nissan-300zx-/1087282460

Edited November 18, 201411 yr by tomfromthenorth

I stand by my orginal comments. I think the entusiasium is great and I understand your desire to drive the car you want, it seemed like a lifetime between me passing and me being able to drive anything even half cool. I hate hatchbacks so I was really disinterested in the saxo's and 106s my friends had I'm still disinterested in the golfs and civics they progressed on to. However in reality time does pass quickly insurance does come down and being a student is for most people something they grow out of.

 

Video games are pretty good at showing the differences between different cars etc but seriously take it from me not real life. I can't lap the ring in 7 minutes in real life, you can't restart because you hit the Armco at 149mph and turbos don't explode, even if and when they do it doesn't cost you real money.

 

I'm not trying to be rude but an 18 year old in a 300bhp 180mph car is a disaster waiting to happen, by the law of averages you will do silly things we all have/ do at times. The difference is you won't have the experience to give yourself a fighting chance of correcting it, you won't have the experience to know when not to drive like a loon and when you do make a mistake which you likely will you will be going twice the speed of any of your friends making the same mistake.

 

Replacing a turbo will not cost you a few hundred quid, trust me. Replacing a turbo oil seal isn't a case of replacing the seal, it's a case of rebuilding a turbo and balancing it, you will end up doing them both because removing the engine took you 20 hours and you don't want to do that again, you will also end up changing a hose here and there because they are dead and it would be stupid not to. At which point £1k has disappeared, a few weekends and the oil and coolant haven't Coe out the budjet yet. It's an old sports car it WILL break, that's what happens it may not be tomorrow and it may not be next year it may not be something horrendous but it will happen.

 

I'm not trying to put you off but if I sit here as captin sensible at 29 years old and think back 10 years would I have been able to afford a 300zx and would I of been able to resist the temptation to stab the loud pedal and go tree climbing. Honest answer no. If you really want one buy one as a long term project time will pass quicker than you think and you will get a better car in the long run. Alternatively buy one drive it for six months every day then tell us how feel. I really do wish you best of luck but I'm surprised an insurance company will touch you.

I might change my mind and get an FTO instead.

That sounds more sensible.

Whatever you go for, you want it to be cheap and cheerful, however boring that sounds. First you need to learn roadcraft and there will be mistakes along the way, we've all been there.

Any car will be a revelation in terms of freedom.

 

Once you have some roadcraft, you then want to learn rwd... I'd go with an mx-5 personally

What sound advice from all!!!

 

At 18 I was driving a Morris Minor with girlfriend ended up in a field, the opposite side, facing the wrong direction!!!

Good thing about that? No oncoming traffic, no ditch, no lamp posts, no curbs, no road signs, no trees or hedgerows! BUT thats 40 odd years ago!

 

That aint going to happen today in 2014 as our roads are very much diferent now!

 

Every day I encounter bad drivers with bad driving habbits & I dont drive that far, drove my Z to the surgery (6 miles) & back. Not daily though.

 

I would go for MX5 great fun car too. Good luck whatever you decide to do.

I've definitely been thinking about the MX-5 as well, but I was unsure as some of the early ones looked weak (sub-100hp). However, I spotted one going for about £1000 that gets like 120hp; has only 2 seats though, but any car with 2+2 would feel like 2 seats anyway.

Yes, I am slightly obsessed with power - I just don't want a car that will struggle and sputter on the roads.

I think we can blame Juiced on your playstation and the new car market for this one. Back when steve and I were getting our 90s hatchbacks, 100bhp was loads, I can not believe how powerful new small cars are, audi A1s and vw foxes all have a lot of power these days. To get a citroen ax with 45bhp or whatever these days is difficult, the scrappage scheme a few years ago can not have helped.

 

I am quite lucky that yesterday I drove both a 1.6 (mine) and a 1.8 mx5 (mum's). Both plenty quick, don't get hung up on power figures, power just covers up for poor driving and gets you into trouble. My citroen AX did not splutter, I never failed to get up a steep hill and any overtakes I managed were well planned and beautifully timed maneuvers. You learn about planning ahead, reading the road all that good stuff in a less powerful car. It would do 80mph what more do you need.

 

Do not get me wrong my zed has huge performance and I use it all, I think I am pretty handy behind the wheel and it keeps me on my toes, even as confident as I am, I think very carefully before going full throttle.

 

A 1.6 mx5 or FTO or hyundai coupe is a quick car. It ia just that in todays market, entry level is also quick and from there the range goes all the way to stupidly powerful (audi s/rs line and bmws)

I'll definitely be having a long think about this; for now, all I can do is wait till my provisional license arrives and finally get a taste of driving.

As for Juiced, I've been playing it on PC :lol:

Nothing wrong with the MX5 - it is not the world's best selling sports car for nothing...:wink:

 

Personally though, I prefer more power, but the MX5 is a tidy, nimble little car and the 1.8 or 2.0 engines are generally considered more than adequate to provide sufficient fun when driving a light RWD convertible.

 

Richard:cool: