Still own the 1999 Firebird Formula I bought as my first new car. At 20 years together, it’s been one of my more stable long-term relationships.
This Gen-Xer was a bit of a car guy, and got to drive quite a few nice ones in his job as a bellman and valet at a luxury resort. The one I wanted, in that I could conceive of eventually having the money to buy one (so there goes your McLaren F1s, Porsche 959s, Vector M12, etc…), was the Porsche 911 Turbo (993 model). All wheel drive, 400 HP back when that was something, Porsche feel. It had it all, IMHO. Never got to drive one, but the Carerra 4 of the same time period I did get to drive, was absolutely lovely.
Lamborghinis, both Countach and Diablo, seemed to me like something created by someone who’d heard of a car, and was great at building engines, but was kind of unclear about how the human was supposed to be involved with driving it. I was very glad that I did a walkaround before moving it, and remarked to my bell captain before I moved the car, that the owner was the idiot who’d cracked the front air dam, not me. Ferraris up to the 335, like the 308 and 348 had the same issue. The 335 OTOH, actually felt like the engineers had talked to an ergonomics specialist. I liked it a lot, for the 50 feet I got to drive it. The Viper RT/10 was insanely easy to to break the rear tires free on wet pavement, and I was trying to drive it very gingerly too. Plastic everywhere. Weirdly, I didn’t care for the NSX at all. Even more plastic-y feeling.
Never did get to drive a McLaren or a super Jag like the -220 or the XJR-15. Which isn’t surprising. We weren’t supposed to be able to drive the Viper GTS’s either, and then the media guys on the junket forgot to give the car back to the separate media lot, and I got to return it… Fun car.
It amazed me that a car could be built to look like that and be so crazy underpowered. It’d be fun to see what Dodge could do with it today if they were to do a retro production.
I was going to mention that there was a period of time they stopped making the Camaro, but it looks like that didn’t happen until 2002, and not the late 90s like I had remembered. I think a Corvette would be at the top of the list. At least it was for me during the 90s which were my teenage years.
Not really what I’m looking for with him. I mean, he may have one of those, but I’m looking at daily-driver car that’s also fun, not a special occasion car. It does need to be sporty, unlike the teenager.
Not so much about screaming “I’m rich” but about whatever will turn girls on or whatever is currently cool. He’s not trying to be superior or denigrate others or anything. He just wants the coolest car in his budget. Coolest, for him, is defined by whatever will look cool to girls his age. I’ll look into the SUVs. But definitely not someone who follows the car world at all. Not quite the college grad who just got a good-paying job and wants a luxury car “because they can afford it”, but a similar lack of thought into whether it’s a good long-term choice, etc. Fortunately for him, he doesn’t have to make payments on it. He’ll be on the hook for insurance and maintenance in a couple years, but he hasn’t given that one single thought. And he has a trust fund, anyway. His thought is “how sexy is the car”?
Late 1998/early 1999 for the teenager. Probably 1994 to 1996 for the engineer. I’m looking for a sporty daily driver that he wouldn’t mind passing to his own teenager in the very early 2000s (good excuse for him to get a new car).
Porsche Boxster, then - a convertible. The MSRP for it in 1999 was 41k. If he’s a student at a typical American public high school - not some elite private academy - it would probably be the slickest car in the lot, and the girls would most certainly want a ride in it.
I was a college student from '99 to '04. I didn’t know anyone who wanted a Corvette when I was a teen in the 1990s. I don’t know anyone who wants one now, except for a business acquaintance in his 60s who collects older ones. Among the small number of my peers who did want American cars, they either wanted Mustang Cobras or Firebirds.
The “attainable” teen dream car in the late 1990s was a blue Honda Civic Si, preferably with five-spoke white painted wheels and a stupid coffee can exhaust. Honorable mention to the Integra Type R.
Never have wanted a vette. Speaks to loudly of mid life crisis.
In the late 90s, for a little while ( 1-2 year period), people were absolutely Obsessed with the Mazda Miata. There were long wait times to buy them and everybody wanted one.
A few years later, after the novelty wore off, people used to berate them as ‘chick cars’. Someone I knew said that mechanically they were junk… but I can’t state that as true of not. I’m not even sure they are sold anymore.
I read once that the Corvette was a pretty stealthy car: The fiberglass body didn’t reflect much, the radiator (which is apparently a big reflector) was tilted back, and the headlight reflectors, because of the concealed headlights, were pointed downwards.
Oh, and our Miatas have been as reliable as anyone could ask for.
It was definitely like that when the Miata was introduced in 1989, but not by the late '90s.
It’s not. Mechanically they’re quite well built and reliable.
Yep, they’re currently on the fourth generation Miata.
And I currently own a 2019 model. I can’t blame someone for wondering if they’re still made, though; the sales number have been pretty low for quite a while so you hardly ever see new ones. Most years they sell less than 10,000 per year, except for a slight bump when the latest generation was introduced around 2016. Sports cars in general just don’t sell as well as the used to.
It’s worth noting that the recently revived Fiat 124 Spider is based on the Miata. I’ve heard that credited as the thing that saved the Miata from being canned. It seems like if a company wants to make a sports car now they almost have to partner with another company and sell it as two different cars: The Miata and Fiat, Toyota 86/Subaru BRZ, Toyota Supra/BMW, etc.
nm