mike spinelli: hey, welcometo road testament. today is the last installmentof best used cars in the world. that's $20,000, the top class. and obviously for the price ofa toyota camry-- probably a little less than a toyotacamry-- you can get a million awesome cars. and to help us decide, we'vegot matt hardigree, editor-in-chief of jalopnik.
what's up, matt? matt hardigree: nothing much. excited to be here. mike spinelli: very good. and also, it's cool that you'rehere because later today, we are debutingjalopnik on drive. matt hardigree: that's right. later today, you'llall be watching. you'll watching this show.
you'll be watching thatshow simultaneously-- two screens open. if you run it backwards,actually, this show, it'll play pink floyd overthe other show. important to know. mike spinelli: perfectlysynced up with dark side of the moon. matt hardigree: exactly. mike spinelli: or whatwas that other one?
matt hardigree: the wall? mike spinelli: the wall. anyway, so we don't run thisshow four hours because this is the hardest one to do. there's so many cars for$20,000, no matter what currency you're buying in, thati had to actually break this down into five categoriesto follow. just so we could actually framethis in a way that might be interesting to figure out.
so here are the categorieswe're going to follow. late model boy racer,and obviously that's your stis and evos. also some other cool stuff inthere that we'll talk about-- r32s and some saabs. we'll ask mr. saab a littlelater about that one. late model v8 fight club,obviously your mustangs, your corvettes, your gtos. german motoring instrument--
that's your bmw,your 3 series. probably e46 and your audi. matt hardigree: or youcan get an e39 m5. mike spinelli: yeah. although e39 m5 i was going toput in highly depreciated luxury bruiser. matt hardigree: that's true. that's a good one. mike spinelli: so you have youramg iron in there and you
have, probably, your e39 m5. and also just yourawesome classics. so maybe you could finda bentley turbo r. matt hardigree: you could,or a ferrari mondial. mike spinelli: right. or a barracuda, like a '66. matt hardigree: maybea bad one. mike spinelli: yeah,well, probably not the greatest shape.
anyway, so let's go withlate model boy racer. what do you got? matt hardigree: i'm going toprobably go with an sti. there was a year there wheresubaru screwed up and made actually the regular wrxfaster than the sti. and then they reversed it thenext year and made the sti faster again. so it's 2008, 2009. so if you get a 2008 wrx, you'reactually coming in
cheaper than a 2009sti, or a 2009-- some people in the commentsmight correct me. i might have this backwards--but i think it's 2008 wrx. pretend you're colin mcrae. you're a rally driver. pretend you're ken blockbefore he got mad ford sponsorship. there's so much you cando with that car. it's great to drive.
i took one out on a graveltrap and just hooned the crap out of it. and it kept going. it stood up. it's a great deal and it doesn'treally-- an evo sounds great but you're thatguy who owns an evo. and if you own a wrx, you couldbe that guy who wears north face clothingand all that. so there's another way to go.
mike spinelli: all right. and it's funny you should saythat because i was going to say, you go with the sti if youhappen to want to drive gravel stages once in a while. but i'm totally goingwith evo. and the reason i'm going withevo is just because i just think it's a more bat [bleep] kind of experience. the evo has alwaysbeen a little bit
more wild and crazy. it's always felt a littlebit more on the edge. and i mean up to ix. i'm not talking about the x. i'mjust looking at the ix mr. i don't know if the mrsare in the $20,000-- i think they might be alittle more than that. matt hardigree: well, you mightget a deal because the original mrs are sostripped down. do they even have airconditioning?
i don't-- mike spinelli: i think so,but i'm not positive. matt hardigree: that's a reallystripped down car. that's a car you get if you hateyour girlfriend and you hate your parents andyour neighbors. you buy an evo mr. and you'relike, screw you guys. you wear a flat billenergy drink cap. mike spinelli: all right,check please. i'll see you guys later.
you're right. culturally, it's the same. there's another problem furtherdown on the list that we'll talk about like that,too, a cultural problem. i'm kind of ok with going withthe evo, only just because it's just madcap. matt hardigree: it is. no, it is almost the craziestcar you can buy in this whole list that we're goingto go through.
for the money, but also,it's terrible. mike spinelli: you almosthave to wear a great suit every day. and i'd probably have to-- i don't want to be likedouchebag long hair evo guy. matt hardigree: youcan't, yeah. mike spinelli: problems,problems, problems. anyway, so that's cool. but also in thiscategory r32s?
matt hardigree: r32 isgood, and that's actually a good deal. because the new golf r drops thevr6 motor for the turbo 4, which is nice in a way andbetter for the environment. but the vr6, if batshit is whatyou want, too, makes it a lot more fun, that motor. mike spinelli: i wonder if,because the vr6 had such a following, whether the pricesof the vr6 ones are going to go up.
matt hardigree: they're probablygoing to go up. mike spinelli: now thatyou can't get them. but the great thing about thoseis that they've held their value so well over thecourse of eight years almost now that they've been around. matt hardigree: it's a while. mike spinelli: first generation,second generation. matt hardigree: and a lot ofthem have gone into trees because there's so much motorup front that people try to
drive them fast and havedestroyed them. mike spinelli: they tend tovector in a straight line. but there's also-- actually ian, mr. saab? ian: turbo x, 9-3. mike spinelli: the saab 9-3turbo x, which i totally forgot about. how many horsepower? ian: about 280, frontall-wheel drive.
they're only in blackand kind of rare. but you can get it and it hascool sports interior and sport suspension. matt hardigree: it'sa great car. i hear the clutches go outeasily on that car. i think you might have sometrouble with that. watch that. mike spinelli: they burn up? matt hardigree: they burnup really quickly.
and if you're a jalopnik and youaccidentally burn up the only car in america that'sa turbo x, wasn't me. but that happened. the turbo x is great. i would totally rock a turbox. and there would be four people on the road whowould get that as you drove by, a year. and those four peoplewould be so happy. mike spinelli: theywould cheer.
when you try to get it serviced,you'd have to-- the good thing about that caris it's like you have to be self sufficient. you'd have to be like the cubanswith the american cars. you'd be putting, like, a diesellada engine in after a couple of years. ian: the saab parts businessis ramping up again. mike spinelli: thereyou go, ian. so mr. saab chiming in.
thanks very much. matt hardigree: investin saab parts. mike spinelli: really, if youwant to know anything about saabs, maybe we'll do a saabshow with ian one day. ian: all right. mike spinelli: cool. so that's the first category. second, late modelv8 fight club. i'm just going togo straight out.
and it's a little bit more than$20,000 right now, but the last gen of thelatest model gto. the 6 liter ls2 one. just because independentrear-- i did actually writethe pros and cons. independent rear, 400horsepower, of course, always good. handles great for a muscle-- probably the best-handlingmuscle car of its time.
matt hardigree: it's almosta corvette, yeah. it's right there. and do we really have anythingcomparable to that now? we have the cts-v, butthat's another class. mike spinelli: maybethe camaro. camaro's sort of similar. they both came outof australia. matt hardigree: they'reboth zeta platform-- or proto-zeta.
mike spinelli: yeah, right. the gto was from thatmatilda concept. the cool thing about that is youcould badge it as a holden monaro, or is it "mo-nair-o"? it's "mo-nair-o" if you'rein long island. you could get all the australianbadges and just sort of drive around on aleft-hand drive version of an australian car. so that's kind of cool.
matt hardigree: that's cool. but if you're going to do that,i would just say just go full-on monaro, convert it tolike an el camino ute ss. the problem with that car isthere are only two colors of that car you ever see. red, which is so loud. it's such an over-compensatingcolor. i love the car. i would totally buy one andjust paint it black.
because the blacks that you seeare just gorgeous cars. or [bleep] magnet yellow. i could not drive a pmy gto. mike spinelli: it'shard to do. and the problem is that thenthey have the seats with the yellow trim. like if it's blue, it'sgot the blue trim. i mean, they're not exactlythe most tasteful cars.
and the problem is thatthe design is actually kind of bland. it's very jelly bean-y. it's very dated looking becauseit has that sort of straight wind-tunneljelly-bean look. matt hardigree: yeah, it'sa huge greenhouse. it's like the biodome. you could live underneath thereand grow your own food and be self-sufficientunderneath the roof of a gto.
which is good, though, becausevisibility is great. all these new cars, you're up. and they're reallyhigh belt line. i'll take really good visibilityand the con being looking bad. mike spinelli: i thought youwere going to say, i'll take great visibilityfor 800, alex. matt hardigree: i'll take it. mike spinelli: another con forthat car is you need a shift
kit because shifting isin the next state. another pro is that they'reridiculously tunable, so you can get all kinds ofstuff for them. so if you want a muscle caryou can take to the track, probably not cost a whole lotto get it track worthy. if you have a little bitmore than the $20,000, i'd say go with that. matt hardigree: i'm going thecomplete opposite direction. i'm going to say--
not going to handlequite as well. i'm going to say bullitt gt,last-generation bullitt gt-- those prices are startingto come down. first-generation bullittgt is ok, too. the second generation isfantastic, actually. the newer mustang gt before the5.0 was really just the bullitt mustang all tweaked. they took all those tweaksand they ported them over to the new gt.
and it's great. the bullitt mustanglooks fantastic. the second generation ofit, they dropped the goofy fake gas cap. the exhaust, huge3.5-inch tips. it's designed to sound like theoriginal 390 that was in the bullitt mustang. it's super fun to drive. on the inside, it's kindof cartoonish.
it has a big cartoonishshift knob. it's like an 8 ball, but analuminum 8 ball, which is actually a great thing. aluminum 8 ball wasactually the name of my band in college. it was a punk reggae band. and it looks great. and when you see it, you knowthat it's a bullitt car but it doesn't scream.
i took it out on a track. i took it actually athennessey's track, his little quarter mile back there. and you could just all daylong stomp on it-- fantastic, wonderful car. actually talking about value,you can't get a gt500 in the $20,000 price range. you can't get close to it. but some of those gt500accents, at least
stylistically and on theinterior, came down from the gt500 to the bullitt. so it's great. and you can pretend you'resteve mcqueen. and you can pretend you're stevemcqueen in a socially responsible way becausesteve mcqueen couldn't exist anymore. because he would havea twitter account. and he would have to go on oprahbecause he beats his
wife and is addicted to drugs. mike spinelli: yeah,but that's the way. you could do the reverseburnouts and still look cool. matt hardigree: absolutely. no, i'm down. and just as an alternate, i'mgoing to throw in the previous gen mustang svt cobra. and just throw thatin as a tossup. matt hardigree: if you canget a mystic paint
job one, even better. mike spinelli: i thoughtyou were going to say mystic pizza. german motoring instrument--all right. so basically, this is them3 verses s4 debate. so obviously, if you're goingto ever go on a race track, you get the e46 m3. basically, you buy the best m3you can get for $20,000. and if it's an e36 top with30,000 miles on it,
maybe that's it. but basically, youwant the e46. matt hardigree: yeah,it's hard to argue. there's nothing else in thatclass that was as good. i'll take s4. s4 is great. but you hope you get it for$10,000 so you can spend another $10,000 to keepit on the road. because it's just such aterrible generation of car.
mike spinelli: well,the good thing-- so the 4.2-liter v8 in theaudi is probably the best-sounding engineever, ever made. matt hardigree: amazing. mike spinelli: the other goodthing is if you have a fiancee whose parents you have to drivearound once in a while, you get the audi. because if you pull up with them3, you might as well just scream, i met your daughterat a booze cruise.
matt hardigree: and i bangedher on the first date, in that car. s4 said that i waited two dates,three dates, took her out to a nice dinner. mike spinelli: i banged her inthe head on the booze cruise. i mean, a head on the boat,you know, a head, like-- anyway, moving on. matt hardigree: i thinkit just wins this round straight out.
if you're meeting girls on abooze cruise, you might as well have the car to match. mike spinelli: exactly. highly depreciatedluxury bruiser. so this is where the highlydepreciated amg cars come in. because basically, you can havea $120,000 mercedes amg tuner for $20,000 right now. i wouldn't want to go and haveto do a lot of work to it, because then you mightbe paying another
$20,000 every year. matt hardigree: well, it's likethe old saying, the most expensive car in the worldis a cheap mercedes. so that's the thing. but i do see a lot of peopledriving around in $20,000 amgs because you can get themand they're awesome. yeah, they're automatic. but i mean, if you travel longdistances, if you just want a german muscle car,that's awesome.
yeah, you get mostly-- i guess in the $20,000 range,it's the compressor one. it's the e55s, the 55 ones. but the competitor to this,though, is the perpetual winner of almost everythingwe ever do. and what is it? because your xi, i thinkthat's your pick. matt hardigree: i was going tosay bentley turbo r. crap, i'm going to totally mix it up.
i know where you're going,but i'm zagging. i am the catera. i am the caddy that zigsor zags or whatever. mike spinelli: why? i thought you were goingto say a bmw e39 m5. matt hardigree: oh, well, ok. yeah, i'm going tomove bentley down here to awesome classic. it's not really classic,but we're going to
just screw with it. e39-- best-looking pre-banglebmw that exists. it's before all of thatflame-surfacing crap. it is cool, it is cold, ithandles extremely well. it is the super sports sedanthat we all grew up loving. and they're everywhere. and they apparently holdup pretty well. because i live in a small townand it is full of e39 m5s.
and here's the trick, though. if you want to save your money,don't buy the e39 m5. buy the 540-- same engine, six speed, whichyou can find with the m package, looks almost as good. it's like $3,000 or$4,000 cheaper. mike spinelli: i didn'tcoach him. i swear i didn't coach him. we did this last week.
matt hardigree: really? mike spinelli: that was the$10,000 pick because you can actually get those cheaperthan $20,000. matt hardigree: you can getthose cheaper than $20,000. mike spinelli: andyou, my friend-- this is why we are like this. matt hardigree: brothersfrom another mother. mike spinelli: yes, last weekthat was exactly the thing that we were talking about.
matt hardigree: you canget the wagon, too. mike spinelli: see, that'sanother thing. so you can get one of those. so if you even want to go betterthan that, you want to spend the $20,000 and get one ofthose with particularly low mileage, then we're talkingsome cool [bleep]. matt hardigree: that'sthe way to do it. i would totally hopin that car. mike spinelli: allright, cool.
so we missed one from backup here, but quickly. remember last week, we talkedabout the 944 turbo. matt hardigree: the944 turbo-- you can get a nice 944 turbo,some crazy s2 whatever. you can get the world's nicest944 turbo for $20,000. mike spinelli: so we figured,yeah, let's push that back into $20,000. just because if you findone for $20,000, it's going to be awesome.
matt hardigree: concoursquality. mike spinelli: concoursquality. where are we? matt hardigree: i want to talkabout the bentley, though. mike spinelli: where areyou putting it, here? matt hardigree: i'm goingto still put it here. forget amg, forget bmw m.bentley even now does not really have a performance arm. they have super sports, theyhave speed, but they don't
really have a name for it. so if you go back further,the bentley turbo r-- i swear i've seen thesefor under $20,000. look on craigslist, postthe links in the comments to what you find. there are turbo rs out there. and here's what you getfor your $20,000. you get the steak knives. you get the rotisserie.
you get a 6.75-liter v8. now, here's the great thingabout a 6.75-liter v8. your extra dollar gets you thathundredth decimal place. mike spinelli: that's huge. matt hardigree: it hasa fraction on it. actually, if you look at theengine, this is the only engine with a fractionon it that is not portrayed as a decimal. and it's fantastic.
so they never released numberson this car because it's so bat [bleep]. mike spinelli: it's adequate. matt hardigree: it's adequatebecause that's all they said. but motor trend lookedinto it. and it was like 500 pound-feetof torque out of this motor. it is phenomenal. so people like you would hateon a bentley because of reliability.
it would be like, oh, you buyit for $13,000 and spend another $7,000 todrive it once. but it's not likean old lotus. it's not that bad. because if you think about it,the british built this engine kind of forever. because originally they builtit for south africa to fight in the boer war. mike spinelli: i didn'tknow that.
matt hardigree: theydid that, and then they fought the kaiser-- mike spinelli: withthe same engine? matt hardigree: withthe same engine. then they fought the naziswith the same engine. and then the space nazis,when they came. i get all my historyfrom movies. that's the space nazis next. and then argentinians in thefalkland island war, and
they're still buildingthe engine now. so great reliability. $20,000, just buy abentley turbo r. mike spinelli: what wasit in when they were fighting the nazis? matt hardigree: it wasin a spitfire. you think of rotary,radial engines. they just put two bentleyengines in it. and it was great.
and you had your chauffeur inthe backseat running the guns. mike spinelli: runningthe guns. and your scarf justwas flowing. matt hardigree: it was great,and you're killing nazis. mike spinelli: that's awesome. ok, turbo r. i'm going with-- awesome classic, right? we don't have any ferrarisin here. so i have two choices.
if you want to go absolutelycrazy-- first of all, david e davis,the famous automotive journalist-- the late david edavis-- said, everybody, every man needs to own av12 in his life. paraphrasing-- i don't know what heactually said. something like that. but the v12 to get is a ferrariv12, obviously. and the cheapest ferrari v12you can get is in a 400i.
which is the poor relation tomost ferraris because it's automatic, first of all. matt hardigree: it's not onlyautomatic, it's a three-speed gm automatic. mike spinelli: it's a gmautomatic, which is the most ridiculous thing youcould think of. matt hardigree: three speeds. one speed for everyfour cylinders. but you are drivinga v12 ferrari.
and i actually reallylike the design. matt hardigree: itlooks great. mike spinelli: itlooks fantastic. matt hardigree: it's likepininfarina but totally sleek and low key. i think if you looked at it youwouldn't necessarily jump to ferrari. i think you might thinkfiat, lancia. there's something else there.
it's cool. you would not be a poser runningaround in a 400, which gets us to our nextcar, actually. mike spinelli: well, actually,that's true. but seriously, that car-- youcould pull up anywhere and get out of a ferrari 400i,and you're awesome. there is no douchebaggeryanywhere near that car, which is probably maybe the onlyferrari you can say that with. where there's absolutely zerodouchebaggery involved.
matt hardigree: the leastdouchebaggy ferrari. we proclaim it here. the late david e davis said,if you're not going to look like a douchebag in a car, don'tlook like a douchebag in a ferrari 400. he's dead so we can putwords in his mouth. mike spinelli: funny enough, theleast douchebaggy ferrari has a gm transmission. so i put in the other$20,000 ferrari just
because, you know what? it's a ferrari. the mondial. matt hardigree: mondial. mondial t-- it's that weird engine far inthe back and you have all this extra room. mike spinelli: and the metricwheels so you've got to change them or else you'll neverbe able to get tires.
matt hardigree: absolutely,no. it's a crazy car to own whichis why they're on ebay for-- we just saw one for $19,500. buy it now. you can totally buy it. here is why i think you shouldactually get a mondial. the 400 is the classy choice. you should get a mondialquattrovalvole. four valves, newer engine--they fixed some things.
it's about 270 horsepower,so it's not slow. you're going to get a redone because that's apparently all they made. mike spinelli: or blue,whatever that ferrari blue was. and you've got to get a coupe. matt hardigree: yeah, not acabriolet because you don't want to be like scentof a woman. mike spinelli: you don't wantto be like, hoo-ah.
matt hardigree: hoo-ah. mike spinelli: take the wheel. matt hardigree: what is that? mike spinelli: sorry. that's all i got. matt hardigree: no, that's awonderful pacino impression. mike spinelli: i don't knowif wonderful is the word. matt hardigree: if you've everbeen anywhere with a ferrari owner, all they do is wearferrari clothes--
not all of them. there's some really greatferraris out there. big love to glickenhaus. but there's so many ferrariowners out there-- they wear the ferrari shoes andthe ferrari pants and the windbreaker. and it's the worst thingin the world. and a lot of them knowthey have nice cars. if you have a 599, you spent alot of money to wear a lot of
ferrari gear. show up next to that guy in thesame outfit, in the same ferrari hat autographed byalonso or some crap, and sit next to him in a mondial. and act like you'rethe same guy. just follow him around all dayand be like, us ferrari owners, you know how it is. oh, going to the shop. me and miffy in our ferraris.
just until they just give up. mike spinelli: i mean, there'sno way that they-- they think you're like the puppythat followed them home and you're just like this. no, screw them becauseyou know what? you have the cooler car. matt hardigree: oh,absolutely. i see a 599, i look like,oh cool, it's a 599. flying buttresses, whatever.
but i see a mondial andi'm like, that guy. actually, i was at acars and coffee and there was one there. and so i was like, dude. it was next to a lamborghiniand it was just like, screw it. mondial. mike spinelli: here iam, that's right. the cool thing about the mondialis that it's the least
pretentious thingyou could have. you pull up. it's just like you'repulling up in an old duster or something. it's like, oh cool, a duster. it's the duster of ferraris. matt hardigree: makesperfect sense. the late david e davis. mike spinelli: yes, thank you.
says david e davis. i think that's it. that's it for us. we're out of numbers. and that is road testament. that's the end of our bestused cars in the world. and thank you for beingpart of it. matt hardigree, editor-in-chiefof jalopnik. and we will see you next week.
and in a couple of weeks,we're taking a hiatus to rebuild our set. because this set is a littlegrim, as you've said. we're actually goingdo some cool stuff. and also later today,watch jalopnik tv. it's up. matt hardigree: yeah,jalopnik on drive. it's going to be awesome. mike spinelli: did isay jalopnik tv?
matt hardigree: you did. mike spinelli: it's all right. jalopnik on drive. it's not tv, it's mtv. see you later. [theme music playing]
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