I like the classic car idea, frankly. Un-tools you.
Unless you have a combover.
I had a Corvette a few years ago. When I forget to check my blind spot and accidentally cut someone off in my little Nissan Sentra (which I do on rare occassion, being human), people tap their horn, give me a dirty look, drive off, and presumably forget about it. When I accidentally cut someone off in my Corvette, they leaned on their horn, screamed at me, gave me the finger, and on one memorable occassion forced me off of the road and demanded that I get out of the car to fight them. It was totally weird.
Your wife is an idiot. They don’t make you look like a tool. They make you look gay.
So maybe a gay tool.
I was 40 when I bought this. I joked with Mrs. Montoya 1.0 that it was either the car (for $2,500) or I get a hot, young, blonde girlfriend.
I was 41 when someone rear-ended me and totaled the car. 3 months later I left Mrs. Montoya 1.0 and started dating a hot, young blonde.
I’m 42. My main ride is this. And Mrs. Montoya 2.0 (the hot young blonde who came along between cool rides) is helping me refurbish the suspension, install a supercharged motor, and decide on a color scheme: black with acid green highlights or blue & orange Broncos theme (she’s a football nut–I bring her nachos & stuff during the games). She looks good in the car.
I looked at and drove the Sky/Solstice and they really didn’t do anything for me. I mean they beat the snot out of the minivan, don’t get me wrong, but I loves me the old MR2 and it’s just about as fast. I actually felt like an old man in a fast car with a hot, young blonde chick next to me when I was in the newer car. But the older car excites ME so I tend not to even think about how I look. Not to mention: (car)+(supercharged engine)+(repaint) = $4,500.
My bestfriend’s dad got a Dodge Viper and all I can drool over his car.
I think if you get a sports car you have two options either get an performance driven god car (corvette, viper or 911 turbo) or go the other direction and get a car just for looks like the vintage cars.
go for something like a new BMW 335i - sports car performance, but in a small, unassuming sedan/coupe style. It’s got a 300HP dual-turbocharged inline 6!
I like the classic car idea. Much cooler.
Yeah, when I see an older guy driving a sports car I kind of snicker. Especially this one time, I was behind a license plate that said “Venimus,” and I sat there thinking “Is that supposed to mean ‘we come?’ or what?” until I realized it was a Viper car and it was supposed to be venomous. The guy was ~65. I nearly wet my pants laughing.
The new Taurus SHO is a 365 hp twin V6.
I would add that convertibles are more often then not equated with being “chick cars” unless they’re classic muscle cars.
In his defense, the correct spelling was probably already taken. 
A 335i is fine if you want a toy car. If you something a little more grown up, try a Jaguar.
I’m 40 and I drive a Lotus. I know people must figure that I’m a tool and I absolutely do not care. I’m too busy having a good time to give it a lot of thought. The funniest part of the whole deal is that this is my version of giving in to practicality, being primarily a year-round motorcyclist before.
It’s actually closer to 350hp/350tq according to the magazines. BMW purposely underrated it because at the time of its release, it was making more power than the then current M3! It’s a fun car to drive with just enormous amounts of torque and grip, but it’s no sports car.
I just came in to say: Inigo Montoya, I love a story with a happy ending. 
Me? I bought a 1968 VW Bug when I was 34, with the encouragement of Jo Kerrwoman, so I embraced my toolishness wholeheartedly. It attracts mostly little kids and old people, which is probably more my speed anyway. I have to plan being gone for the morning if I’m going to buy gasoline, because everyone’s going to come over and talk to me about it. That is, of course, when it runs, which right now it doesn’t.
Is it an Elise? When I see a Lotus, I assume the driver knows something about driving and they bought it for the handling, not the looks.
You know that song that goes “Boys like girls, girls like cars and money”? Man, did I get to experience that up close and personal one night when I took a friend’s car in order to replace a tail light bulb and pick up some grub at the local Burger King. Her car is a dark green BMW convertible, similar to pic 2 in your OP. I’ve never been smiled at so much by attractive women in my life! (I’m 60 now, btw, and was around 58 at the time.) At almost every stop light or just cruisin’ down the boulevard, women – and sometimes even couples – smiled, nodded and sometimes even asked me how I was doin’. Cute little 18-year-old girl at the Burger King drive-through smiled and smiled and made sure I knew she put extra salt and ketchup in my bag.
All in all, quite a positive experience! I wouldn’t care less what people might think if I were you. In all likelihood, middle-age fuddy-duddies will think you’re a tool, and hot young and thirtyish women will think you’re cool. Your wife probably knows this, too – hence the dick-compensation argument 
(And I would point out that while keeping your marriage secure and happy may well be an overriding argument against buying such a car, I’m just pointing out that I wouldn’t decide against it based on what other people might think.)
Yeah, riding around in neo-roadsters (or in any sort of contemporary Porsche) alas, causes many people to break out the “tool” stencil (Which BTW confuses me in the case of the Solstice because, frankly, IMO that car “compensates” for nothing.) But many others WILL say, hey, cool, he looks happy.
As mentioned if you make it instead a sweetly restored vintage sports car then you’ll have EVERYONE giving you the thumbs-up. For essentially the same thing, only minus airbags/ABS and less environmentally friendly. What can I say, people are weird.
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I don’t think it necessarily makes you a tool, unless you drive it like a tool. Or are one of those jerks that takes up four parking spaces in a parking lot because you don’t want anyone parking your car. I have to admit, I also judge aggressive drivers in expensive cars more harshly, because the impression I get is that the driver must be some sort of rich asshole who is entitled to own the road more than me because I am a big fat redneck in a $20,000 pickup truck.
I know that’s not rational, but that’s my own personal prejudice.
Yeah, I use it as a daily driver, but I bought it to take to the track. Coming from motorcycles, I wanted the smallest, lightest car possible. I joke that it’s the least car I could find.