If the 370z came with a turbo from the factory, the demand and value would be very high; just like the supra. The reason why the supra still demands the money it does is because of the cult following and the modibility of the car. They make crazy HP on the stock platform. I just sold mine, it made 670rwhp on the stock block on pump and meth with all of the supporting mods. Its a great car for dyno numbers and still looks good today. The unfortunate part is that is getting long in the tooth and the interior is not aging well.

R.K.

I recently traded in my 2012 touring/sport/nav/6m with 35.5k miles and absolutely bald tires and was shown $25.5k for it while the dealer took $1200 off of their list price on the 2010 Jeep I replaced it with.

That is one data point to add I guess.

Why worry about dropping values when it is driven by the market where you have no control? Not worth getting disturbed over. You bought the Z to have fun with so just do exactly that. Your best bet if you are selling is to sell privately at the price you want to a clueless soul. Good luck with that.

my G's price dropped in value the first 9 yrs. the drop in value was pretty sharp around 6-7yrs.

then recently i saw carmax selling a G $4K higher than kbb for a low milage one. :D
so it appears if the milage is low and well taken care of, there are some exceptions.

I disagree. The cult following of the MKIV turbo was because of the Fast N Furious movies. If you go to Australia or Japan, MKIV turbos can be bought for around $13,000 USD. I'm implying that the Fast N Furious movies didn't really have much of an impact there, but did in the U.S. Plus, when the MKIVs phased out, they were $50,000 cars brand new here in the U.S. This kept a lot of teenage dreamers from buying this car.

Personally, I think the FD3S is the sexiest Japanese sports car from the 90s heyday. But their resale values suck because the rotaries are perpetual tuning problems and unreliable. That's why people do LS swap ;)

^
I think the cult following for the MKIV was around prior to FnF coming out. Also, you can get almost any car dirt cheap in Japan, so comparing the prices and cult there is different than here. For example, I lived in Japan/Tokyo for 7 years and bought a 90 Nissan Skyline GTS-t with 30,000km on it for $1,800 american dollars. This was in 2000, so only 10 year old car. Even the US spec 95 e36M3 I bought in 2005 with 10k miles was only $6,000. I brought that back with me to the states.

^I was in Japan too for a year. Used cars are dirt cheap because of all the costs associated with owning a car there such as road inspection fee, the fact that cars can't go over a certain mileage (I believe it's 100Km), etc. I know it's a lot more expensive to own a car there than here in the U.S. I saw R32 GT-Rs selling for $10,000 USD or less (after being maybe 7, 8 years old).

As for the MKIV topic, it was the last twin turbo Japanese sports car before all the other ones got axed here in the U.S. I think the cult following was due to the FnF movies. FnF used that orange riced out one.That's why you see so many riced out MKIVs for sale on Ebay, etc. Bright, loud paint jobs, riced out body kits, etc. I like them STOCK. The stock ones owned by mature owners fetch good money.

I'm just saying that I wouldn't pay $25,000+ for a 20 y.o. used car. If money were no object I'd buy a Ferrari F40...those fetch 1/2 M to 1M$+ <--the best car in the world ever ;) Better than any current Ferrari, Lambo, GT-R, Vette, BMW....yada yada yada

if someone local was selling a modded S30 for $20K i would buy it cash. :yum:

that's the thing about older cars. there's a niche market for it...and people are willing to pay more just to have it.

^why not buy one for a couple thousand $, mod it yourself. I see them for sale often. I hear the VQ V6 from even a 350Z can make these things run low 13s all day long...and with some bolt on's I hear they can hit 12's no problem. Very fast for not that much money. I bet you can build that for $15k if you can do some of the mechanical work yourself (motor swap).

I wanna buy an FD with a LS6 motor but people want about $30Kish...not worth it imo.

The whole issue here is nissan allegation that they retain value well when they kill value by dropping MSRP by 10% on the same model. It's bad business and insures that people don't replace their nissan with another nissan when they finally dig out from under them. I mean...who would? It's like rhianna taking Chris Brown back. I was disgusted when I observed nissan do that.

Some good points in this thread. I sold my 370 in December. It was a 2009 sport package with 75k. One owner, no accidents and a motor (replaced by Nissan) that had a documented 15k on it. It needed a new differential and i got 17.5k for it privately (sold in 2 weeks). That is a 50% all in depreciation hit from my purchase price in ~5 years. This was also below the kbb at the time (~19k). The BEST offer I got from a dealer was 14k despite the trade in value on kbb being much higher.

After I sold the Z, I paid almost 20% over Kbb for an E46 M3. I did a ton of research before pulling the trigger. For m's in very good condition, this is not unreasonable. Bottom line, I know kbb and Nada are the only broad metrics we have but they really are very unreliable.