[Mark021]

God this is exasperating.... champagne tastes... gatorade budget.

I need a reality check. Remember the Joplin song: "Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz". I think I'm out of touch. If only it were a status thing I think I could laugh at myself for being such a fool, but most people I know would probably just say; "20 years old, you could get a brand new toyota for that much!" Then I get a chance to drive one and about 5 minutes into the drive I start to hit the gears and find the tempo of the car and I start to bond with it and that little grin gets stuck in the corner of my mouth.

I really am wierd.

Techweenie... I did start to look at the 915 cars as well but was a bit afraid of the "eruo" cars from what I have heard on this site so I tended to pass them by. I really like the looks of the 84 in Venice, but the "euro" designation along with the 130K was just enough to make me feel like I could be getting into more than I could handle.

Any advice would be appreciated. It just seems that the overwhelming appreciation is that these cars can do 300K, but of the hundreds if not thousands of cars that I've seen listed over the last year or two I can probably count the cars with 200K on them on two hands... so there's an apparent disconnect between the "they last forever" belief and what I'm seeing in teh market. I don't pretend to have a personal appreciation one way or another but it makes me think that a car with 130K on it typically is well past midpointin it's life unless you are willing to put tens of thousands in it, and then what do you have really? I'm just not familiar with the "take the odometer and throw it out the window" world, I appreciate that it probably exists but I'm from the simple perspective that mileage tends to have a strong interpretive meaning about overall health of cars in the mainstream, and I'm too middle-everything to be able to play outside of the mainstream well.



Regards,

Mark