Hello Everyone From Phoenix!
 

Hey guys and gals! I joined a month ago and wanted to make my debut post. Just a little information about me. I'm an 18 year old college student majoring in business. My main hobby is driving a few of my family vehicles. Ever since the day I turned 16 I get a huge adrenaline rush and thrill from driving; even if its down the road to get milk and eggs at Wal-Mart ;) I also enjoy hiking the local mountains around the Phoenix valley.

I'm going to be graduating next year(that's the plan) and I am going to be making a very big choice in my life; purchasing my first 'real' car. Its not going to be straight out of college as I need to get a stable job first before spending a large sum of cash. I'll be saving up for a good 6-8 months before making that purchase. It might be a far ways away to few, but its going to come very fast for me. I like to thoroughly research everything I do, and this is just another research 'project.'

Coming to the 370z forum, you can pretty much assume that a 370z is on my list of cars to research. There are a few more I have been looking at; a Lotus Elise/Exige, and a Honda S2000. I'm not asking you guys to tell me which one I should get; I would just like to get as much information as you know about each car; the logistics and basic stuff. I'll start by saying what I like/dislike about each car on that list.

The 370z is a car I was very excited to see after being a huge fan of the 350z. I love all the Z cars; the styling is fantastic. What I love most about the 370z is the looks; both interior and exterior. The shorter wheelbase from the 350z was a big improvement in my book. I also really like that the newer 370z's have the option of a 7 speed automatic. Phoenix has some heavy traffic so driving a manual isn't the most fun :mad: I also like the feel of the paddle shifters in your hand, it just feels right to me. However my doubts on the 370z is the weight; at nearly 4,000 pounds its quite heavy.

I love the Lotus Elise/Exige, one, if not my favorite car on the road right now(In my price budget :)) The styling, handling...everything about it. I love the raw interior. I also love the handling. So much response; its basically a go-kart. I also love that sense of being a part of the road when driving it. You feel every bump and are so close to the asphalt its great. Being a Lotus it has that exotic feel to it, something I could really take pride in. However, being only 2,300 pounds and made of fiber glass, its not really sturdy. I would be so afraid of making one tiny mistake; hitting the curb or judging a driveway wrong, and making a HUGE accident out of something that wasn't huge. I mean you get hit at 10 MPH and its basically a total loss. Being only 18 I don't have the most driving experience. I like to think of myself as a great driver, but don't we all :tup: Also what scares me is the insurance cost.

The Honda S2000 is a great little car, a lot like the Elise really. Great small car with awesome handling. I love how it looks all done up(Lowered slightly, nice tires on it). I'm afraid however that since the car is discontinued parts will be harder to find as times go on.

What I want out of a car is a few things. I want to be able to take it out of the garage and enjoy it the minute I hop into the seat. Acceleration is, if not the highest priority on my list. I need that feeling of being sucked into my seat. The second priority on my list is handling. I know the Elise has great handling because I've rode in one, but how is the handling in a 370? Just knowing that it weighs nearly twice as much frightens me about the handling. The last thing is well...a bunch of things. I want to be able to hear a nice engine note and get some high revs in. Lastly I want to be able to enjoy some of my music on a nice stereo system. Cruising is what I love the most. I'll be auto-crossing this car A LOT. I don't plan on tracking the car, but I could change my mind. This car I purchase will be daily driven, but I do plan on picking up a cheap truck or something down the road for tasks that the car can't do(big trips to the store, hauling stuff...etc). My price range for this vehicle is going to be 30,000 dollars. Max would be 35,000.

Kind of a lengthy first post, but I felt I covered most of what I felt needed to be covered. Hope you guys post some informative and nice comments.

Sincerely, Dylan.

Damn, that was long!! I stopped reading after the first line :bowrofl:

Welcome! :hello:

:icon17: So true, WELCOME!







P.S, I'm sorry but I didn't read it either lol

I get that a lot:rolleyes:

i managed to read 3 FULL paragraphs ... =)

My advice: Dont even think twice.. get a Z and you will never regret.

Welcome.

Graduating at 19yrs old with a Business degree? So you graduated high school at like 16 or something, wow.

I don't know your financial situtation, but you should really think about how this will effect you for the next 10 years or so. If you plan on financing, be warned that your interest rates are going to be high if they even approve you for a loan. My sister just graduated college a year ago, has a good stable job and she still needed a cosigner to get a loan for a Pathfinder. Her credit score was really good but she didn't have a whole lot of credit history. Throw in a high insurance rate for someone your age, maintenace cost and you could really bury yourself financially before you've even started. You probably don't want to hear this stuff, but I wish someone had given me this advice when I bought my first car. In the end, its your money to spend and your decision.

As for the cars you mentioned...

The S2k is a good car, but finding one that hasn't been beated on will be tough. This is probably the least expensive option and parts aren't that hard to find since it is a popular platform to mod. High reving, nice handling car but could use more torque. Easy to mod with all the performance goodies out there though.

The Exige is probably out of your budget and a used Elise is going to be a tough call. The maintenance cost will hurt your pocket more than you think. It makes for a great track car, but is not a good daily driver. If you haven't been inside one, check it out and you'll see just how spartan the interior is. The chasis is plenty sturdy and has nothing to do with body panels. Anyway, your not suppose to crash. Also, you probably wont have electronic nannies like VDC or TCS.

The curb weight for the 370z is 3,250lbs (1,470 kg) (base) far from 4,000 lbs. The Z is an easy choice IMO.

I would think about getting a used 350 instead. Even then, a sports car might be too much car for you with only 2-3 years driving experience.

Fast car + inexperience + huge adrenaline rush= DEATH (no joke)

Drive safe.

welcome-- good luck with the car search.

If you have any S vs Z questions, feel free to PM me. I should be able to help offer some comparisons between the two cars (I think I've owned 3 s2k's by now, but it might be 4).

Thanks Mike for that post. I had no clue the 370z was that light. I guess I read the wrong site on 370z specs. That totally changes everything now. Thanks for the welcomes everyone :)

Whoa. Welcome mang

For those looking for instant gratification and tl;dr:




Now for what I came here for:


Welcome and hello fellow member of hell. :hello:

Glad you found/decided to join us here. As for the debate on your list of possible cars, I think whichever one you decide to go with will give you what you are wanting to get because each one has their individual pro's/con's

What I will say is that don't count out the 370Z on handling or because of its weight. For a car over 3k pounds, it handles extremely sharp. And that's stock... just wait and see once (if you buy one) how much better and even more responsive it would be with a few mods. I've put Abby through several canyons in SoCal and have been extremely impressed with it's responsiveness. Given its not an almost 6 figure priced car, I don't expect it to be 'the greatest handling car in the world' but it definately can snap your neck if you want it to.

Now assuming you do decide to purchase a Z...

The qualities you admire in the Lotus and the S2k can both be adapted to the Z with allowing you to drop it almost onto the ground if you want depending on which brand of suspension producs you go with. And as you know driving around in phoenix, lower isn't always better. I have a 7AT myself and I will agree with you, in traffic here it's a godsend. Maybe some of the die hard sports car fanatics out there will flame because you didn't get the 6MT but don't worry. They're just jealous our tranny shifts faster than they do. :tup:

I too have peered into the thought of auto-crossing with this car, but need to get a few more mods knocked out and get some better tires first. If you stay here in Phx, expect to get about 15k good miles out of the stock tires before you'll be wanting to replace them. If you keep it as a DD only and don't do any long trips, you might be able to strech that to 20k. I highly recommend (unless you plan on going with a full intake like the Stillens or Injens) getting the K&N drop in filters cause they will need cleaning... Often.

If you do decide that a Z is what you want, and a 370 is what you want, check out the Private Classifieds here on the forum so you can help give a good car a good home. If you want a new one, PM me and I can give you a list of the local dealers to go to/avoid. I've had experience with 95% of them so I can help you out with that. If a 370 is out of your price range new/used, there's nothing wrong with getting a 350 and having fun with that. the good part with that is the fact that parts will be a lot cheaper. :tup:

If you have any questions or anything let me know and I can hopefully point you in the right direction locally. :tup:

Wow, :icon14:

long for you to get it up :happydance:

I also stopped after the "hello" :tiphat:

:icon17: :tup:

that's what she said
:nutswinger:

wdkwang, you are crazy! lol!

Welcome! I am in Laveen. I also shopped the Exige and Z. Got the Z and love it; it is the perfect blend between muscle car (Stang) and sports car (S2000). I love it. Read around the forum and you will find lots of threads to get an idea of the Z car.

I am so please with my car in its current state, I do not even compare it to other cars...

Welcome!

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago- never mind how long precisely- having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs- commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme downtown is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there.

Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see?- Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster- tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are the green fields gone? What do they here?

But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling And there they stand- miles of them- leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets avenues- north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all those ships attract them thither?

Once more. Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries- stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.

But here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within; and here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue. But though the picture lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd's head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd's eye were fixed upon the magic stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in June, when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among Tiger-lilies- what is the one charm wanting?- Water- there is not a drop of water there! Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel your thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.

Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin to grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of my lungs, I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger. For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a purse is but a rag unless you have something in it. Besides, passengers get sea-sick- grow quarrelsome- don't sleep of nights- do not enjoy themselves much, as a general thing;- no, I never go as a passenger; nor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a Commodore, or a Captain, or a Cook. I abandon the glory and distinction of such offices to those who like them. For my part, I abominate all honorable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind whatsoever. It is quite as much as I can do to take care of myself, without taking care of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and what not. And as for going as cook,- though I confess there is considerable glory in that, a cook being a sort of officer on ship-board- yet, somehow, I never fancied broiling fowls;- though once broiled, judiciously buttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who will speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled fowl than I will. It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that you see the mummies of those creatures in their huge bakehouses the pyramids.

No, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast, plumb down into the fore-castle, aloft there to the royal mast-head. True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one's sense of honor, particularly if you come of an old established family in the land, the Van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all, if just previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have been lording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand in awe of you. The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a schoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears off in time.

What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who ain't a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may order me about- however they may thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way- either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed round, and all hands should rub each other's shoulder-blades, and be content.

Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must pay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But being paid,- what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!

Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome exercise and pure air of the fore-castle deck. For as in this world, head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it. But wherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as a merchant sailor, I should now take it into my head to go on a whaling voyage; this the invisible police officer of the Fates, who has the constant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me, and influences me in some unaccountable way- he can better answer than any one else. And, doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run something like this:

"Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States.
"WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL."
"BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN."

Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces- though I cannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall all the circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill and discriminating judgment.

Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale himself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my curiosity. Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island bulk; the undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale; these, with all the attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds, helped to sway me to my wish. With other men, perhaps, such things would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and could still be social with it- would they let me- since it is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place one lodges in.

By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was welcome; the great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into my inmost soul, endless processions of the whale, and, mid most of them all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.

^^Ditto

holy shiii, how long did it take to type all that

For those who don't know, this is Chaper 1 from the Book of Frost. Read it, heed it. :stirthepot:

baaaahahahahaa, frost ftw :roflpuke2:

OP - hi! i didn't read a single post here hahaha.

:icon18: :icon18: :icon18:

Watermarking... If you want, I'm going to The Blue Agave in Scottsdale Sat night if you wanna meet up there as well. One of our own members works there so that's our unofficial meet-up spot. :rofl2:

It's not official until I go.

Then how about showing up lol :tup:

The S2k is a good car, but finding one that hasn't been beated on will be tough. This is probably the least expensive option and parts aren't that hard to find since it is a popular platform to mod. High reving, nice handling car but could use more torque. Easy to mod with all the performance goodies out there though.

:hello: