Let’s play a little “what if” game today. What if it was your 16th birthday on this very date and a well to do grand parent handed you $5,000 in cold hard cash for you to purchase a car. Gramps said that you can spend it on whatever you want (car-wise) and there’s no restriction on how many passengers, what country it was made in, what power plant it had, or how easily you could make whoopie in it.
Being that this is 2012, your five K isn’t going to go that far in buying you a piece of vintage iron. Sure, you could buy something from the muscle car era but it would quickly become driveway art when your budget ran out fixing rust, rot, and mechanical issues. Performance cars of the 1980s and 1990s are now pretty depressed in the price department. Fox body Mustangs, third and early fourth generation Camaros with LT1 power, trucks of the same era, and even (gasp!) some foreign stuff can all be had for well below five grand, leaving you some fixit/spruce up budget.
Put yourself into the mind of a gearheaded 16 year old who is sitting in high school class right now. What’s he thinking about buying and cruising around in?
Question of the Day: If you were 16 today and had $5,000 to spend on a car, what would you buy?
