Japanese Car buyers guide

connundrum

Hi,

After taking some sound advice re - BMW 316's, I reckon the next best thing should be a Japanese rocket! Any suggestions as to cars which are insurance friendly (please note my insurance on a 1.6 Impreza would be €1600), comfortable and relatively powerful - I'm not looking for anything turbo'd cos that'd fcuk with my insurance so 1600cc max.

I've noticed that there are some cool Levins about.. but are there other such cars which I am missing.

Max budget of €5500

Many thanx

Kimbot

Honda Civic SIR 1.6 and can be tuned to push close to 190BHP

Levins can be great if you know how to tune them!! 165BHP as standard but the internals could handle up to 270BHP!!

You could get a supercharged Levin for that money and they go like stink mate!!!

Also post this on www.manic-motorz.com for a few replies!!

bspoke

Yeah but the civics and levins are not exactly insurance friendly jonnie. Although I suppose it all relies on the OP's circumstances

As joony said try posting the question on Manic there are tons of peope over there who are in the same situation as you and will be able to answer your questions

cantdecide

i don't know how much you'd have to part with, but i once drove a 1.6 lancer mivec. unbelievable. top class non turbo jap weapon.

colm_mcm

agreed on the Mivec, very fast for the size, and not impossible to insure either

if you prefer a bit more "show" and a little less"go" also consider the Mazda MX3 1.6,


if you want a bit more pace the 1.8 V6 is good for 0-60 in 8.5 seconds, although it'l be harder to insure.

zilog_jones

The above was also sold as the Autozam AZ-3 and Eunos Presso. What about the 323F, or are they shíte? MX-5 might fit your requirements too, unless insurance will be too much being a convertible.

Regarding Lancers, you may not want to crash one! The Almera is similarly dodgy.

unkel

connundrum wrote:

please note my insurance on a 1.6 Impreza would be €1600

So what's your budget for insurance? A 1.6 Impreza within your car price budget would be quite slow as would be a BMW 316 as you were probably advised too. Any 1.6 so called "performance" jap car, like a Mitsubishi Colt Mivec 1.6 or a Civic VTI 1.6 would be very expensive for you to insure. Quick guess is €3k-€4k insurance if they'd quote you at all

Perhaps stay put for another year or two, keep the enormous amounts of money the insurers want to take of you in your pocket while clocking up a bit more NCB and buy a much better car than I mentioned above and run it cheaper than you could run one of those now. WinWin situation