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  • The fastest American car around the Nurburgring isn’t a Corvette anymore

    …allegedly

    This is Collector Car TL;DR: a weekly recap of what happened on Collector Car Feed, plus car auctions, listings, automotive news, and other things of interest to the average CCF Enjoyer, and you can get it weekly by giving me your email address.

    The Videos

    We Found MORE Stolen Cars on Facebook Marketplace
    The Stolen Cars trilogy continued last Monday with this video. We found a car being sold out from under the bank, a Chromebook being sold out from under a school, and much more in the same vein.

    No title, if you know you know: even more stolen Facebook Marketplace cars
    This concludes the Stolen Cars Trilogy; unfortunately we kind of run out of stolen cars here, but there’s still plenty of weird Facebook Marketplace junk. Did you know Maxpeedingrods makes coilovers for the Buick Century? Me neither, but there’s a slammed one in this video.

    We found something unbelievably expensive at the junkyard
    Netgear copped a sick pull at the yard and tells us all about it. This is another important lore-building video for real CCF heads and ends with an edit I’m pretty proud of, so this is my one-video recommendation for the week.

    The News

    The 2027 Nissan Z Visits the Plastic Surgeon, and the Nismo Now Comes With a Manual
    Nissan just facelifted that car you saw on the street, driving the other direction, one time, three years ago. They will also now sell you the ~$70,000 version of this thing with a manual gearbox. Honestly it looks good, and “more stick shifts” isn’t a bad thing. It’s just hard to get excited for anything this ghost of a once-great marque does. Good luck, Nissan.

    Mazda Promises To Keep The Next Miata Under 2,200 Pounds
    The next Miata won’t be a pig, or even a hybrid as some have guessed. It’s going to remain the same well-balanced enthusiast-forward car, bought new almost exclusively by non-enthusiast retirees, that it has been for almost forty years. We appreciate you, Mazda.

    The Ford Mustang GTD Might Have Just Destroyed the Chevy Corvette ZR1X’s Nurburgring Lap Record
    Ford is, allegedly, at time of writing, now the fastest American around the ‘Ring. The absurd Mustang GTD is now, allegedly, the second-fastest production car, EVER, around the ‘Ring. Have I mentioned lately that Ford didn’t take bailout money back in ’08-’09, or ever in its history?

    Kansas Joins Growing List of States to Pass Racetrack Protection Laws
    The Kansas House of Representatives just passed, unanimously, a bill to protect existing racetracks from NIMBYs who choose to buy homes in subdivisions near them. This is not performative: dorks actually complain about the noise coming from racetracks they choose to live near, and actually get racetracks shut down. It really happens, but no more will it happen in Kansas. Iowa And North Carolina have already passed similar legislation, and ten additional states (not listed) have proposed similar bills.

    The Cars

    2000 Honda Civic Si
    This is a beautiful example of an EM1 and will go for a fortune. 76,900 miles verified, single owner, stock. It has some sunburn on the roof, but that’s not going to stop this car from reaching $20K.

    1996 Buick Roadmaster Sedan
    Another beautiful example: this time a desirable American neoclassic. We love a good boat here. Imagine going on a road trip in this thing; if nothing else you’d be very, very comfortable. Everybody even gets their own ashtray!

    2009 Rossion Q1
    I’m including this only because I’ve never seen or heard of it. I assumed it was a Fiero-based kit car, but it’s a ground-up kit with a carbon fiber monocoque. Something different.

    1993 Mercedes-Benz 500SL
    And here we have Doug’s weekly humiliation ritual, in which he says only nice things about one of the worst looking cars you’ve ever seen. Really zoom in on this wrap job. Even in the first picture it’s just awful. Scroll down to the comments and have a laugh at the seller saying it was wrapped by him and “someone who is familiar with wrapping”. I wouldn’t let this person wrap a Christmas present, they might lose a finger on the scissors. Holy god what an awful looking job.

    1993 Acura Integra LS Coupe
    Another nice verified low mileage Honda that will go for a small(er) fortune, this second-gen Integra is unfortunately not a GS-R, and is a little crusty around the edges. You can still bank on $10K or better here regardless.

    1992 Nissan 240SX SE
    This car is really only notable because 240s don’t really come up for auction much on either BaT or CaB. This is the second on Cars and Bids in the past six months, and third in the past year and a half. Scrolling back even farther to the beginning of Doug’s Bring a Trailer knockoff, this is only the 21st 240SX CaB has listed since the platform’s inception during the coronavirus pandemic. 


    As for the car itself, it’s your usual swapped 240SX: a mishmash of parts. Mystery Meat. There’s nice parts, there’s confusing absences, there’s modern stuff, there’s parts that look like they were installed decades ago. It’s a project car, but with SR20s priced like it’s a week before Race Wars, I expect $20K or more on this.

    The End

    Sheesh, somebody got a Super Street magazine calendar that matches up with 2026 days, AND a Scion CD today. You really should have signed up for the mailing list already! Scroll up.

    I finally found a set of Recaros for my FiST, but they’re a ten hour round trip drive away, so I’m probably doing that right now! I also replaced my rear pads and rotors, and will be doing the fronts this week as well. I’m still hunting a minor vibration in the front end that only shows up around 50-80 MPH. Thinking it’s a wheel bearing.
    The midwest is warming up, so it’s time to get moving. What did you work on this past week?

    See you Soon.
    -Feed

  • Toyota MR2 Spyder Roundup

    The 2000-2005 MR2 Spyder is on the verge of classic/antique in many states, and with that, we’re seeing renewed interest in this fantastic (and fantastically slow) roadster, which is inarguably the best handling generation of Toyota’s mid-engine fever dream, if not the fastest. Horses in the back and incredibly light (2195 pounds dry), you’ll have a great time holding high RPMs through winding back roads and tearing down the highway until you blow your pre-cats through the EGR and end it all.
    The following are all recent low mileage examples.

    First up is this modified 2001. Inside you’ll find a built turbo 1ZZ and gauges affixed to every flat surface. This car is a Super Street era masterpiece: you’ll even find nitrous in the frunk. The owner claims 400 horsepower. Includes an OEM hardtop and installed TRD bodykit. Located in Illinois, this MR2 Spyder has 45,000 miles on the body and around 10,000 on the rebuild. Listed at $15,000.

    Completely stock, here is a fine 2000 Solar Yellow with 74,500 miles, priced at $10,995 in Avon Lake, OH. There’s a tear in the passenger seat and more in the top, and you may love or hate the factory wing and its double 3rd brake light appearance. I think it’s pretty rad.

    Here’s one you missed, listed only three days ago: a 2003 Spyder with only 38,500 original miles, with an asking price of $11,500 in Paris, Texas. Remove the pinstripe and send this one to Bring A Trailer.

    The seller wants you to know that yes, this 2002 MR2 Spyder is a stick, and it is stock. Only 16,000 original miles, asking $16,500. Located in Columbia, Maryland.

    Another missed opportunity: 92,000 miles on the body, 60k on the engine: this 2ZZ swapped 2000 MR2 Spyder could be a deal, if you can overlook the salvage title. Sold for $7500.

    Check out all recent MR2 Spyder listings here. You can subscribe to get email notifications for new Facebook listings as we find them. You can also get notifications on Discord.

  • New Models on The Feed

    Here are all the new threads we’ve added in the past few days, at the request of users just like you. Something you want that we don’t have? Just ask, either on the forum or on Discord, and we’ll get it sorted.

  • The Destructive Nature of Man: Minion Miata

    Sunburst Yellow is one of the rarest colors of NA MX-5 Miatas in existence. Tacking a $250 surcharge onto the bill, only 1519 Sunburst Yellow Miatas were made, making them exceptionally desirable. One is for sale right now on Bring A Trailer, and, at time of writing, its price is already at $8500 with seven days remaining. That price is sure to hit the teens if not the twenties; it even comes with a matching hardtop.

    For this reason, when one scans the Facebook Marketplace listings, yellow NAs stand out. So imagine my disgust, eyeing a tiny yellow thumbnail and clicking on it, only to find this rolling nightmare.

    That’s it, really. I just wanted to share this painful moment. This 1994 is not an original Sunburst Yellow, which were only produced for the 1992 model year. This example is a color change, along with some lovely graphics. It has 150,000 miles and the owner is asking $10,000 or best offer. Act fast.

  • Nice Price or Crack Pipe: 73,000 Mile S14

    You know the deal on this one. The drift scene ravaged the S13/S14 population over the past 15-20 years. Finding an unmolested example takes a great deal of patience, the owner always knows what they have, and generally speaking, if the the mileage is low, it’s because the car doesn’t move.

    This is not an ideal S14. You can tell it’s been sitting in the sun for years, it has unrepaired paint damage all around, particularly on the front passenger corner, and it’s an automatic. The previous owner installed a push-start ignition, which is never a good sign. But, it’s listed on Facebook Marketplace for $7800, and has 73k miles on the odometer.

    Side note, to see a list of every S14 240SX we’ve found on Facebook Marketplace, check out this link. If you’re new here, we hunt Facebook (and eBay, and Cars and Bids, and Bring A Trailer) for collector cars of interest, and compile them into these massive lists. We update daily, so come back for more.

    The engine bay is complete: no eBay short ram, no OBX header. This is a hen’s tooth, a unicorn horn. Yes, it needs work, but the way things are going, will you ever find another S14 this “reasonably” priced?

    We’ve reached a point where most 240SXs have been destroyed. And at $7800, this one might be next, unless you save it.

  • Dammit: This Solar Yellow MR2 Spyder Sells on Facebook Marketplace in Six Hours

    I own an MR2 Spyder. It’s a 2000, it’s bright red, it has 63,000 miles. It’s genuinely the most fun car I’ve ever owned. I cherish it and would never consider selling it.

    …Except I definitely will now, because one with two thousand less miles than my own sold for over $17,000 on Bring A Trailer recently. Considering what I paid for mine, hanging onto it in these absurd times feels foolish. After all, these cars get posted on Facebook Marketplace all the time; I can just get another one.

    Expect to see this for sale sooner rather than later.

    So I’ve been looking, and looking, and looking. Unfortunately, it seems a lot of Spyder owners have also gotten the news that these cars were crafted from solid gold. $10,000+ asking prices are the norm for sub-90k examples, and the owners I’ve attempted to haggle with have all but laughed directly in my face. I’m sure if I tried to offer $6500 in person they actually would, immediately before chasing me off their driveway.

    Yesterday, I received an alert on our Discord server. You can enter what make, model, year range, and mileage range you’re after, and my bot will tell you when there’s new matches. Two MR2 Spyders had just gone up for sale: the one pictured in this article, and a white 2001 with 63K on the clock, which was optioned identically to the one that just sold on BaT.

    I immediately clicked on both and sent offers. The BaT clone was asking $8000; I offered him my customary $6500, to which he replied that was simply too low as his inbox was filled with interest. Fair enough.

    Solar Yellow, the only color louder than Absolutely Red

    The yellow MR2 was being offered at $6500. Located a mere 28 hours away by highway in a suburb of Los Angeles, this 89,000 original mile Solar Yellow example actually included the OEM hardtop, color matched of course. Underneath was a black top and black cloth interior, just like mine. I offered him asking price. I told him I had cash in hand. I did everything I could to secure this car. He sent me the VIN and some jovial conversation, telling me how much he loved it, how much he hated to see it go. I told him I needed to book a flight, just don’t sell it.

    This OEM hardtop is worth $3000+ if you can even find one.

    Of course, you know how this ends. Within six hours of listing the car, it was sold. This car, with the matching hardtop and sub-100k mileage, is the perfect Bring A Trailer bait car. even with 50% more miles than the white and tan beauty that sold a couple weeks back, I’m sure if it were listed, it would fetch a similar price. The hardtop is basically impossible to come by at this point, much less color matched, and the solar yellow really does look insane out in the real world, surrounded by the usual tan and beige conveyance appliances most choose to drive.

    It’s not a matter of if, but when this car will show up on Bring A Trailer, Cars and Bids, or eBay. We’ll keep our eyes peeled and update on this car’s journey as it continues. I fully expect to see it again in the near future sporting a five figure price tag. The white 2001 Spyder I mentioned remains for sale at the time of this writing, but god knows for how long. I guess I’ll make another offer.

    One final note, if any of you live in the Los Angles area and want to act as an intermediary for these kind of things, jump on the Discord and talk to us. California has a wealth of great cars and we’d like to get our beaks wet from thousands of miles away. We’ll make it worth your time. Free stickers?

  • What cars do YOU want to see?

    I want to narrow our search a bit. Daily Deals missed a few days due to some issues with my server, but now that we’re back running, I want to make it something I personally actually want to scroll through. For me personally, that means 90s and 00s Hondas and Toyotas: the Civic Si, RSX, and MR2 Spyder. It also means 80s and 90s Nissans: Z32 300ZXs, S13s and S14s, and the Sentra SE-R. And maybe some oddball Subarus like the Brat could keep it interesting. What that doesn’t include, in my perfect vision, is hundreds of F-150s and Super Duties, any sort of German car at all really, and maybe less Plymouth Prowlers wouldn’t hurt.

    But nobody’s tastes are the same, and I want to make sure I’m still including your interests in these posts, and what we aggregate on the forum. So what do you want to see? Email me directly at collectorcarfeed@gmail.com to tell me what you’re looking for, or let me know in the Discord server.

    I’m also thinking about reducing the number of emails to every other day, or maybe three times a week. If you know about this site and come here regularly anyway, do you really need a daily notification in your mailbox? Do you want one? I’m open to either way, continuing daily or switching to a few times a week. I’m pushing the limit on my free Mailchimp account right now, so dialing it back wouldn’t hurt. Again, let me know what you think!

    There are some new features in the Discord server (get notifications for specific searches, with filters for year price, mileage, and keywords!), and a few other updates worth mentioning, but I’ll tell you about them in a separate post. Thanks for reading!

  • Found on the Feed: Better ACTY now!

    If you’ve ever been to Japan, then odds are you’ve had the pleasure to see what’s known as a kei car. These are smaller Japanese market-only vehicles that value function over form. Kei cars and trucks have been making their way to America for quite some time, but it’s only recently that they’ve become staples on many import shops’ websites, with some places going as far to only import kei vehicles. Powered by tiny, sub-660CC motors, in this ACTY’s case, it’s a 650CC I3. These vehicles also came in a variety of forms, from trucks to vans; there’s an ACTY for everyone.

    Bet you didn’t notice she wasn’t wearing shoes.

    It should be known that when I pulled this example up during the Feed’s offices daily “T. Flats and Trucks” luncheon, there were several vomiting noises, and we can’t be sure which caused it. [editor’s note: we don’t all agree with Atlas’ disdain, I THINK IT’S CUTE] However, here’s today’s 1994 ACTY Van, currently listed on Facebook Marketplace. It’s been in the states for less than a year and only has around 50,000 miles on it (76,000 km). It’s a stick shift and the seller states that it’s in great condition for its age. The seller, a Feed discord regular, has a deep-rooted love for the ACTY platform, and when asked what makes it special, he said it’s got a rare double sunroof, for taking your six-pack of Asian thots on a pleasure cruise to the nearest beach for an afternoon of backgammon.

    The seat that’s held 1000 Japanese farts.

    Overall this example seems to be fairly clean and with a good detail, and some carpet extraction, you’ll be the star of the next Cars and Coffee. Priced at $8,000, I think this vehicle won’t last long. It’s a fair price and if Bring a Trailer has shown us anything recently, it’s that 90’s JDM stuff is on the rise and this ACTY is about as JDM as you can get.

  • Found on the Feed: Rally Spec Pulsar GTI-R

    The Nissan Pulsar is the (already) eccentric Nissan fan’s Nissan. These were some unique little hot hatches made for the Japanese market, and never quite made it here to the United States (we got the Sentra instead). That’s kind of a shame, because certain models (GTI-Rs) came with a SR20DET, all wheel drive and the rest of your classic 90s Nissan tropes. The only thing this little car didn’t do is race Mt. Akagi against a certain panda Trueno. [editor’s note: fact checked for accuracy. It’s true: Takumi never races a GTI-R]

    That brings us to today’s model, which is set up to be a true Group A rally car, which, according to Wikipedia, was an actual thing Nissan did! However, this particular example, found on Facebook Marketplace, is a recreation, appearing to be a GTI-R underneath, as stated by the seller: “NOT saying its a NISMO car !! Has some Nismo parts !!” But nevertheless, this is a cool car, decked out with everything you’d need to attend the next New England Forest Rally with your favorite co-driver.

    There do be a redtop there

    Now, the price isn’t exactly cheap at $19,500. But I’m going to forgive that for the fact that it’s both a 90s Nissan with an SR20DET (thanks, Bring a Trailer) and a bonafide Rally Car. It sounds like at the end of the day there’s some room to wiggle here, being that it’s been listed for a week now. With the rest of the mods the seller lists, I don’t have a ton of doubt that this would be a solid weekend driver.

  • Found on the Feed: Your next NB Miata Project

    We all know NBs are the superior Miata [we don’t -Feed]. It’s been discussed on the Collector Car Feed podcast several times now. However, what we’ve got here is a real project that is (thankfully) OBO so you might be able to scoop it for a reasonable price, considering the low miles it has.

    Almost everyone on this fine website knows about Miatas; it seems like even the most common folk know now. I double-checked this by yelling out the window of the Feed offices “Hey what’s a Miata?” and a nice gentleman on the sidewalk below replied “A great driver’s car!” If you need more convincing, let me tell you this fact: It’s the best selling roadster of all time.

    A nice wet picture to hide how terrible the paint really is.

    This particular NB has just under 29000 actual miles on the car. However, the seller does state that the Arizona sun has taken a toll on the vehicle’s paint and dashboard, as noted by the above and below pictures. The car is an original 5 Speed and does have a hardtop, which is an exceptionally desirable, hard-to-come-by amenity.

    Overall, this car’s a little steep at $8500, but as I said in the beginning, the seller states this is or best offer, so you could potentially scoop it for a decent price. A little Maaco love, some time on the internet finding either some new seats or having an upholstery shop run free and you might (keyword might) have a Bring a Trailer winner on your hands. You can go here to find the listing. Unless it’s slipped away by now, in which case you should have gotten Feed Premium to find this gem and ones just like it, first, when they hit Facebook Marketplace.

  • Big if True: World’s First 10 Second Honda For Sale

    Today’s staff pick is an actual piece of import tuning history. Today we take a look at the Silver Bullet Honda CRX, currently up on Facebook Marketplace for “trades and cash 30k range”.

    This CRX, originally owned by David Shih, has spent the last 22 years untouched as part of a private collection in Monroe, Louisiana. Shih was interviewed by Honda Tuning Magazine about his historic feat in which he piloted the little B18 powered sport compact to the world’s first ten second quarter mile pass in a Honda, posting 10.87 at 136 miles per hour, all the way back in 1996.

    This is truly a piece of automotive history. This car can be credited with kicking off the tuner craze of the late 90s and early 00s, leading into the creation of the Fast and the Furious franchise, American Products Company, Super Street Magazine (which coincidentally also started in 1996), and so many other things we’ve come to love in hindsight here at Collector Car Feed. $30,000 for this historic milestone almost feels like theft.

  • Site Update: Daily Deals Revamped

    If you haven’t taken a look at Daily Deals in a minute, I don’t blame you. Where are the deals?

    Up until now, the Daily Deals post has been a collection of all cars found in the past 24 hours with less than 100,000 miles on the odometer. The idea was maybe this would help you find a low mileage Bring A Trailer darling to flip.

    Unfortunately, when you’re dealing with 10+ year old cars, limiting to a hundred thousand miles rules out the vast majority, and what if you’re not necessarily looking for a cherry example? What if you just want to get behind the wheel of a 240SX or 4Runner and don’t really care about the number on the odometer?

    Daily Deals has been reworked. Now instead of limiting by mileage, it shows everything we’ve found in the past 24 hours (and will soon include live auction listings). To help make sense of the mess, I’ve added labels to standout listings, both positive and negative. There’s a 1-5 dollar sign price rating, markers for low and high mileage, and a quick warning if the price or mileage looks fake. The price and mileage labels are model-specific: previously, anything under 100k was considered “low mileage”. Now, low and high mileage labels are based on the mileage of all similar vehicles I’ve found in the past six months. The same is true of price labels. Everything is based on similar vehicle data instead of arbitrary numbers.

    Our goal here has always been helping you find a good deal, and I think this is a massive step forward in living up to it. This functionality will be added to the forum pages as well in the near future, along with some other tweaks and new features. This site is never “finished”, there’s always something else to fix or improve.

    Anyway, the YouTube channel needs subs, so smash that bell or whatever.

    -Feed

  • Collector Car Feed Podcast #10: Jalopnik isn’t really my thing/one of us bought a FT86

  • Collector Car Feed Podcast #9: Beer, Food, and Fast and the Furious

  • Collector Car Feed Podcast #8: Japanese Melange

  • Z Odyssey, Part 2: Ship (Doesn’t) Happen(s), A Donkey Show, and Love at First Sight

    I’d found the car I wanted, but, coming from across the country, how would I buy it? With everyone and their uncle leery of wire transfers thanks to the numerous Nigerian princes out there, I had to come up with a way to get my money in the seller’s hands without having him being scared of getting ripped off. Any banker in their right mind would warn him against accepting a wire transfer. I could always mail him a check, but then I’d be vulnerable if he backed out. I considered putting the money into an escrow account, which is common, but that would take time: time I didn’t have, since I was on both the seller and my friend’s schedules.

    Golf, it turns out, would be the Klonopin all three of us would need to ease the anxiety. My friend Pat works for the golf course at Mammoth Lakes, CA, and the seller was a golf pro at his local resort. Once the two of them made the connection, it was smooth sailing from there. I wired the money directly to his bank, but the tellers warned him of the potential scam. He shrugged it off and put faith in me and Pat. He was $7000 richer, and I was $7000 poorer, with the title to a 1972 240Z. I kept in contact with the seller over the next few days, as transfers can take time. I wanted him to be sure that this wasn’t a scam and that the money was transferred.

    Pat made the 4 hour trek back with my new pride and joy while I started contacting shipping companies to get it loaded onto a trailer to ship back east. This turned out to be a nightmare. Transport companies tend to just accept whatever job they can within a reasonable price range, regardless of the location of the vehicle. I had multiple carriers accept the job, wait a few days to a week, call me to arrange pick up, realize the location sucked, and then cancel on me. It was Thanksgiving , and time wasn’t doing me any favors either, as roads and winter storms could disable travel at any time.

    After a few weeks of waiting, I wondered if I should just try and drive it home. I started researching flights and found a few decent fares. I talked with my wife to see what she thought of me embarking on this journey, and she was 100% supportive. I waffled for a couple days on the decision, since I figured I would need a two week lead time to make the flight prices work. As luck would have it, I was finally going to pull a sort of scam on Frontier. Frontier was offering $48 one way flights to Vegas. I could leave the next day for fifty bucks and start the journey. If you aren’t aware of Frontier, they nickel and dime you for everything. You want to choose your seat? That’s an extra fifteen bucks. You want to bring a carry-on item? That’s an extra fifty bucks. You want to use the bathroom, ten bucks. I might be the first person to make that flight for the advertised price. I was planning on packing light anyways, so this was more of an incentive. I shoved everything I would need to bring with me in a “personal item” sized backpack. With 30 hours notice, I was on my way to Vegas with only a backpack and a one-way rental car destined for MMH airport in Mammoth Lakes. 

    I arrived in Vegas at 1 AM on Friday, December 1, 2017. I wasn’t hassled one bit from Frontier, which honestly surprised me, as I figured they would try and nickel and dime me at any opportunity. I got about 4 hours of “plane sleep” on my flight; that kind of sleep where you’re partially awake and partially asleep at the same time. Where you’re constantly entering and leaving consciousness. As I had a long drive ahead of me, any sleep I got was better than none.

    I got to my Enterprise rental car at about 1:30 AM and embarked on the five hour drive to Mammoth. I stopped at the infamous Alien Highway rest stop off of Route 95 north of Vegas, and was bemused to see that they had an alien brothel. If I had more time, was single, and desperate, I might have walked in just to see what it was all about.

    In between Mammoth and Vegas is nothing but highway, a small town, and a few brothels. I made it to the small town of Beatty around 4 AM. I was starting to get a little tired, and thought I saw something in the middle of the road. It wasn’t an alien, but I’ll be damned if it wasn’t two donkeys crossing the street. They didn’t acknowledge or flinch as I came to a quick halt about 10 feet away. I had seen wild horses crossing the road when I previously lived out here, but never wild donkeys. I wasn’t sure if that was an omen, but I pushed on regardless. I made it to Pat’s house in Mammoth at about 6:30 AM.

    I finally got to see her after weeks of waiting. Pat had gotten busy tearing her down a little bit to prep her for the trip. The original radio was long gone and she had been spliced open (Dash Panel had been hacked apart) to store an antiquated aftermarket CD player. I say store, because the head unit wasn’t even connected to power or the speakers. If you’re going to make a trip across country, you have to have music. And it’s sad to say, but if I was going to go from Mammoth to Northern VA, I needed tunes or else I didn’t think I could make it. He had also wired up the cigarette lighter so I could charge my phone for the trip.

    We buttoned her up so I could take her out for a quick test drive and stop by the local NAPA auto parts to get a few needed items. The clutch was slipping under load in 3rd, 4th, and 5th but once you got above 3500 rpm, she would hold and pull all the way to 6k, which is short of redline. I wasn’t ready to push her that high yet. This 240 had a L28 paired with a 5 speed transmission which was perfect for highway cruising. It still had the stock 240Z secondary cylinder adjustment rod, so I was hoping to make some adjustments to get rid of the slipping clutch. Would it work? Tune in next time to find out!

  • Collector Car Feed Podcast #7: All Toyotas

  • Collector Car Feed Podcast #6: Demonstrating BMW Ignorance

  • Collector Car Feed Podcast #5: 240SX Auction Madness

  • Collector Car Feed Podcast #4: Cleetus and Cars Controversy/All-Domestic Special

  • How To Ruin The Market: Nissan 240SX Edition

    Like many enthusiasts and users of this fine website, I appreciate collectible and rare cars. I also seek out the high profile sales of some of these collectible and rare cars. It helps me form a better opinion of where the market is heading, so that I can offer that advice to you fine folks (and anyone else in the office who will listen to my soapbox rants). If you can’t find me browsing the forums here, I’m probably browsing Bring a Trailer, eBay Motors, or newcomer Cars and Bids. And in doing so, I’m noticing a scary trend: undesirable outliers setting the price to unobtainable for exceptional examples. Case in point, this 1990 240SX (S13)

    I can smell the little tree from here.

    Undesirable

    This is an undesirable S13. Why, you ask? This is a USDM model with a single cam KA24E truck motor. It’s a “zenki” (or “pignose”), pre-facelift model, which is widely considered the ugliest variety, although some people (mainly zenki owners) do seem to appreciate the kitsch of it.
    Short of being an automatic (this 240 does thankfully have the five speed manual), this is pretty much the least desirable iteration of the 240SX. While that’s not so bad for Facebook, this wasn’t listed on Facebook. This is Bring a Trailer. The name and reputation of the website itself implies that this vehicle is so rare, unique, and special that you need to Bring. A. Trailer. This car is none of those things, especially when you can import an example powered by the legendary SR20DET or with Type X parts equipped. This example is an average 240SX, which somehow evaded a drift kid strapping an eBay turbo on and cutting the fenders off.

    This car sold for a whopping $32,750, and no, I did not make the number up. If you look at the data Bring a Trailer provides on specific models, you will see that this vehicle is an outlier. Prior to the sale of this example on August 24, 2020, the highest-selling 240SX went for $20,000, and that puts the average price of a unique and collectible S13 (at least according to the folks at Bring a Trailer) at approximately $8,800.

    As I said in the beginning, I believe sites like Bring a Trailer, eBay Motors, and Cars and Bids are useful tools to help predict and set the market, especially as enthusiasts and collectors flock away from auction events like Barrett Jackson and Mecum, where they don’t often showcase cars that our generation wants. This is also equally important to note, because as import regulations become lifted for 25-year-old cars that were never sold in North America, we’re going to have to look somewhere else to get some guidance on pricing.

    Why this S13 matters

    So, you might be asking yourself: why does this particular 240SX, which sold in August of 2020, matter? Well, when I originally began to cogitate on this whole idea, I knew something like this was going to happen: here we have another S13 that just closed its an auction on Bring a Trailer. The high bid of $18,001 did not meet reserve. Upon learning this, I broke several pieces of furniture in the Feed’s office (sorry guys, I’ll get another coffee pot soon). Why does this make me irrationally angry? Because aside from the Juniper Green Metallic, the car in question was just as undesirable as the listing in August! [Editor’s note: I want both of them, but at 2005 prices pls] The seller even had the nerve to list the car with a reserve that was entirely too expensive! At the end of the day, these auctions set price trends in the secondary market. For evidence, check out the S13 listings page here on Collector Car Feed. Wow, that’s a lot of $1234 listings, isn’t it?

    I don’t see someone paying $9,000 for this.

    Observe the above BaT reject, recently found for sale using Collector Car Feed. An 80,000 mile example, its paint is far from perfect (note the peeling roof), it’s a single-cam KA, and it’s automatic. Three strikes and you’re out. But, because of that single moon shot S13, the price of a Nissan 240SX has risen so drastically that this formerly $4,000 car is now asking $9,000, which, coincidentally, is the average asking price on Bring a Trailer. [Editor’s note: I bet we see this constantly once I add finished auction analytics.]

    I don’t think this is the first example of this issue in the market; in fact, I’m sure this has happened before, twenty or thirty years ago when companies like Barrett Jackson first began to auction cars. Except then it wasn’t S13s, it was Camaros and Mustangs. The only respite we’re going to get is when a real JDM legend hits the market, it should finally make the value of true collectibles reflect the opinion of their owners thirty years later.