What Should I Buy? The Ultimate ’90s Car Debate

Mark’s wishlist is precise:

• Must be restorable to pristine condition (no basket cases)
• Capable of feeling fast—overpowered traction, general hooliganism encouraged
• Open to American muscle, Japanese imports, and even obscure oddballs
• Mod-friendly: not a museum piece, but a canvas for customization
• All-in budget: $100K, including purchase and restoration
• Bonus points for nostalgia, uniqueness, and emotional resonance

and much, much more!

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Our panel of break fix Petrolhead are back for another rousing. What should I buy? Debate using unique shopping criteria. They’re challenged to find our first time collector, the best vehicle that will make their friends go. Where do you get that? Or what the hell is wrong with you at the next cars and coffee?

Awesome and awkward all at the same time. That’s how I like to describe the nineties. Time when bands like Nirvana, sublime and Green Day were all we would talk about. And the cars we salivated over had exotic names like Supra RX seven and GTR.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right Brad. And tonight our special guest is fellow car enthusiast Mark Shank, who has called upon our panel of esteemed Petrolhead.

To answer the question we love to ask, what should I buy? And in this case, nineties cars. So we wanna welcome Mark to the show and our panel of GTMs that’ll be here with us tonight. So welcome Mark.

Mark Shank: Hey, thank you. Thanks for having me on. I’m excited to talk about this. I’ve been thinking about this [00:01:00] project for a while, uh, where I kind of go with my next car, and I think I have landed in the nineties, so I’ve been trying to figure out what I wanna do before we dive down this

Crew Chief Brad: rabbit hole.

Mark, why don’t you tell us a little about your car history? What’s your driving today?

Mark Shank: Mm, car history. So, uh, I, I kind of, I’ve kind of been all over the place. First kind of fast car that I had was a 94 Z 28 Camaro. It was unfortunately an automatic that was what I could afford at the time. The transmission went out on it and was able to put a shift kit in it, which was a lot of fun ’cause it would kind of break transmission mounts on an annual basis.

It shifted so hard, you could definitely break it loose between gears. Had a 98 eclipse, GST, which I absolutely loved. 2000 6, 3 50 z 2006. E 46 M three. With the, with the manual, let’s see, uh, had 1985 Porsche nine 11 Carrera that I picked up in 2009. That I used as a daily, uh, in Southern [00:02:00] California. So I grew up in Frederick, myself as well.

Lived in San Diego for about six years. It was such an awesome place for air cooled nine elevens. I mean, the, you, there were so many great shops that could work on them. There were so, like, I had this thing that was out in the desert, its whole life. Didn’t have a square centimeter, rust and anywhere. I love that car.

Was in mint condition. Spent a ton of money on it. Kids came, had to get rid of it. So I got a a, a brand new. I ordered. Did the track day pickup for, uh, uh, what is it, F 85, A 2015 M three, which was the four door. ’cause now I had a kid in a car seat, but I did get the manual in it. I, I do think everybody should own a four door manual car.

It’s a rear wheel drive. It’s a lot of fun. And then I, I turned that in. I got a 20 16 9 11 car. I guess that was a 9 9 1 0.1. And I have a BM BMW X five V eight for family hauler. The, not the M version. And my, my fun car is behind me. 9 9 1 0.2. GT three with a six speed manual. Uh, you thought this was a, an image background [00:03:00] behind me?

It’s not. It’s my actual car. Um.

Mike Crutchfield: Which I’m, I’m sitting here looking at like having anxiety over how close that is to the, the garage door from this angle,

Mark Shank: I, I, I kind of was like a two car person rotating cars around. I do think I’ve married that thing behind me. I just love it to death. So I think I’m, I’m, I’m with that one for a while, but I can, I can get a lift and, uh, I’ll just put something, um, underneath it or above it or something.

Crew Chief Eric: So in addition to that, you’ve actually done some ter cross and track days with, uh, PCA and some other groups, right? So you’re not just a collector or a connoisseur. You’ve been on track as well.

Mark Shank: A little bit. I, I do not want, do not want to over represent my track experience at all. I’ve done a couple BMW uh, driving school events with the, with the, the M three side, you know, some autocross.

But, uh, I, I want to do more of the Porsche Club. I actually have a neighbor out here as pretty active in it as well. I want to do more in that space. For me, it’s, it’s been a time thing. My job is tough and you’ve got little kids, so I’m hoping, you know, a [00:04:00] little older, a little more independent and, you know, they can run around on a Saturday without harassing me all day.

Um, but yeah, you know, I, I, I would absolutely love to get to a track a few times a year now, and then hopefully when I’m a little older, do that more frequently.

Crew Chief Eric: Since we’ve got a little bit of background into your car history, and I, I know, and I know in talking with you, you have a, you have a very good knowledge of cars and whatnot and we kind of had a precursor conversation to this about cars in the nineties.

And so, you know, as we get into our basically main event here, our, what should I buy panel, you know, a bunch of us have come prepared with some options for you about going about and buying a nineties car. What we’re really interested in is getting your shopping criteria, you know, what you’re looking for, price range, some things you’re not interested in, some things you may be interested, et cetera.

So why don’t you lay that out for the panel so we can better focus on some of our suggestions.

Mark Shank: Awesome. I think the panel will be fun because I love a lot of things and you know, I’m, I’m really kind of open, so a couple things, right? I’m, I’m kind of OCD, [00:05:00] so I want something that I can get in really that I doesn’t have to get it in really good condition, but I have to be able to get it to really good condition.

Right? And so sometimes, you know, that can be harder with some of the older ones. I wanna have a very nice car and I’m, I’m fine with paying the money to get it there, but, but I like, you know, just clean and tight. No rattles, no no excuses. Really good shape. The, there are so many kind of different. Aspects of nineties car culture.

You know, I, I loved all of it. I love the Japanese unobtainium that you played on a PlayStation one, right. So I’m born in 81, so I’m in high school and graduated in 99. So, you know, kind of grew up through that. But I also grew up my entire life going to car shows, which was mostly American muscle. You know, I’ve, I’ve always thought about kind of different things that might be fun there.

So I’ve really enjoyed, you know, the Japanese sports car aside, the American muscle. I want something also that I can get. Pretty fast, right? I mean, not, not not fast in a, in a zero to 60 [00:06:00] time or fast in a, like a particular lap time, but I want something that can feel fast, overpower, its traction for most of its gears, and that you can be a general hooligan in.

So we were like having that debate. Like to me that kind of crosses out like a Ferrari 3 55, although those things are probably, I’m not sure they’re worth the price at this point. Super

Crew Chief Eric: unreliable too, but hey, whatever. Yeah,

Mark Shank: yeah, those generation V eights. I think one of the thing I, I did enjoy about it that I should mention, like the idea of kind of customization and modification, right?

So I’m not in this to get something, leave it bone stock and hopefully sell it, you know, for some money later. I don’t care if I’m devaluing it, I’m doing this for me. I’m not doing it as an investment or something, something stupid like that. So I, I do, you know, as you know this, this is a little bit of the 12-year-old kid who had the nine 30 with the whale tail on the wall, and, and that’s why I didn’t get the touring package on my GT three.

And I don’t give a shit if the touring package was the cool thing to do. [00:07:00] Exactly. It didn’t have a giant, it didn’t have a giant SPO on the back and my nine 30 poster did, uh, yeah, I mean, it’s a little juvenile. I don’t care. I’m doing it for fun. I think that modification and customization part of it is definitely part of that.

Call Karcher that I, that I really enjoyed.

Crew Chief Eric: And I think you said something just to, you know, kind of round out this thought before we turn it over to the panel to start throwing up their suggestion. I think one thing that was really almost prophetic in a way was when you and I were talking and you said, you know, looking back now on a car from the nineties is the same as when I was a kid, looking back at some of those cars from the fifties and sixties, it’s the same time gap.

It’s that same generational gap, and then it makes you feel super old when you realize that a nineties car is 30 years old at this point. Right. So, pretty crazy. It it is. You’re,

Mark Shank: you’re absolutely right. So, you know, growing up, and I’m looking at American muscle in the late eighties and early nineties, that’s how old these cars are now.

Right. And I’m going through with my dad and he’s telling me about, you know, my dad owned a ton of muscle cars, uh, back in the day. He, I grew up with him. Quarter mile [00:08:00] bikes were like his gr our garage. We never had any cars in our two car garage. It was full of motorcycles. And so, you know, there was a lot of motorcycles, but he loved cars, you know, was always talking about the American muscle.

And so yeah, that, that epiphany, I, it was literally just kind of dawned on me one day. I’m like, wait a minute. I am the same distance from those cars. Now it’s a tribute to the quality of the cars that they’re not all completely rotisserie restored like they were back then. Right. They had to be because they’d fallen apart twice over by the time you got ’em to 1990.

But, but at the same time, people are just starting to think about, how do I restore this car? You’re finding them still unrestored. I don’t wanna get into this 10 years later and the market is kind of already defined, and I wanna get in front of it and be able to do something before the market tells you what to do and, and people, yeah.

You know, start kind of figuring it out.

Crew Chief Eric: Let’s shock the panel a little bit because you just slightly went there, but then didn’t say what your budget was.

Mark Shank: Oh. And so from a price range, I think all in. With like [00:09:00] getting the car and, and you know, I’m not, I’m not gonna do much work myself, right? So I’m paying somebody to do work on it.

I, yeah. So all in, uh, call it a hundred grand.

Crew Chief Eric: Alright guys, this, this is, this is the mission now, all right? Car from the nineties, fully restored. It’s gotta be ahoo, hooligan car, a hundred grand or less. How about we go to Mike?

Mike Crutchfield: Well, so you mentioned having owned a, uh, a Z 28. I love

Mark Shank: Mustangs, by the way. I, I love Mustangs.

But the Camaro had so much more power in that generation. I think you’d have to be a little silly to pick the, the five liter stock

Mike Crutchfield: if you’re looking for that more muscle car look, I would actually pitch the, the Camaro’s cousin. Oh, specifically the WS six. Yes.

Mark Shank: WS six. Yep.

Mike Crutchfield: I was always infatuated with those cars when they came out.

They were, I mean, a friend of mine had a 92 Camaro, but it was only the, the Rs, but the Firebird WS six with that big, uh, evil Ram air hood. Yeah. And the commercials they had were from Polar.

Mark Shank: The [00:10:00] evil commercial was awesome. And then they had, when it first came out, they had Chris Tucker driving one and one of his buddy cop movies.

Like, you haven’t seen Chris Tucker in a movie in 25 years, but the last one you saw, man, he’s driving a WS six around.

Crew Chief Eric: So I had the opportunity to drive a stock one, and I got to drive Mike Snyder’s, SCCA pro solo car. And Brad remembers that, TransAm. And I tell you what, when you mod a WS six and you really straighten out that suspension and get it dialed in, that car is a handful, but it’s also a hell of a lot of fun.

So mad props to Mike on that suggestion. I actually hadn’t even thought about the WS six.

Mike Crutchfield: Yeah, the second he brought up Camaro. I’m like, Ooh. You know, it just, it struck a memory of that car. And plus, since the WS six went with the LS motor, you have the whole LS aftermarket to go. Oh, absolutely.

Crew Chief Eric: Absolutely.

Big, big turbos. Big turbos. Yeah.

Mark Shank: Yeah, mine, mine was an LT one. It was prior to that, but yeah, towards the end they dropped the LS in it. So

Crew Chief Eric: is, is the GOAT an option as well, or is that, no, the goat’s later. Right, so that’s a two [00:11:00] thousands car, so that won’t work.

Mark Shank: 2003, two. Well, hang on, hang on. Okay, so this is a good point.

This is a good point. You know, I guess this is up to me. I think some of the best cars from the nineties were made in the early naughties. Right. They had matured it. They figured it out. Like the NSX you want is one of those last couple years. Yeah, that’s true. I’ll give you that. Yes. It’s like the best car from the nineties, but yeah, sure it’s from 2002, but whatever.

I don’t care. I’m not picky. Right. You’re E 39 M fives. There’s a lot of really great, I think if you look at its contemporaries at the time, in the early two thousands, they’re like, ew. You know, like, okay, it’s still solid rear axle still doing this. It’s still doing that. You know, Mustang had that brief flirtation with independent rear suspension in the cobras, but when you compare it to the nineties cars that it was the mature version of I agree.

I agree with, I totally accept, I will totally accept early naughties cars, but it has to be representative of the nineties. It can’t be like a. Like a 9, 9 6 turbo or something, which is like, cool, but that’s definitely not a nineties car.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, I gotcha. I gotcha. So Mountain man, Dan, since we’re [00:12:00] talking GM Mountain man, Dan

Mountain Man Dan: I, I’m on board with Mike’s suggestion of the WS six and for that particular one with the Ramir was 98 to oh two.

So those were the years that they made that particular version of the WS six. And I’m all on board with that suggestion, Mike. Huge kudos for that. But a question I had for the budget. Is that number you threw out the initial purchase? Or does that include modified? No, I want

Mark Shank: that to be, I want that to be all in.

Right. So it kind of excludes something like an R 34 because it’s not gonna work. Right. But you could do an R 32 and restore it and build it up, and you could do a really great, super powerful car for that kind of money. If that’s what, if that’s what you wanted to do. I, I don’t mean to make anyone go discuss.

I will not do an Impala ss I’ll tell you that. I

Crew Chief Eric: can’t do it. I can’t do it.

Mark Shank: I can can, but this is the wagon. This is the wagon. What about the Callaway? It’s the wagon. So you don’t

Mike Crutchfield: want, you don’t wanna drive an upside down bathtub, is what you’re

Mark Shank: saying. Dax, Dax Shepherd has one of these prob. The, the, the [00:13:00] problem was that, I think the problem is, is that the SS was really cool for grown ass adults in the nineties.

I wasn’t a grown ass adult. So I’m thinking of something that I thought of as cool in my more informative years of which absolutely the WS six.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, if we’re, if we’re still talking GM then, you know, we, we were actually debating this internally and it was like C four Corvette or C five Corvette. I’m like, well, the C four Corvette, the only one in the nineties is any good as a ZR one, and it’s still a C four Corvette at that point.

So what about the C five Vet Z six as an example?

Crew Chief Brad: Z six didn’t come out until 2001. I mean, I could, if he’s talking about his nineties cars Yeah,

Mark Shank: yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: Early two thousands.

Mark Shank: So the, I, so I wonder if the C five is maybe the inverse of my prior rule. So my prior rule being like, you could take a mature car that, you know, stretched into the naughties, but if you had, I think of the C five as a Naughty’s car that came out a couple early.

Right. And so, you know, not as much, do you have

Crew Chief Eric: enough chest hair to drive a Corvette?

Mark Shank: Yes. [00:14:00] I’m, I am I, and New Balance, I. If I didn’t shave, I would have hair from like here down to my ankles. So it’s totally fine. Um, the, um, the, my, so I will say it ’cause as, since we’re on American cars, I have two problems, which I’m gonna have to figure out how to get over if I’m gonna do it.

One is a solid axle and two are the interiors suck. And like particularly, you know, like a, a C four, even a C five Corvette. Like, I look at the inside of them and I want to throw up. And the funny thing is, is like I, you know, I’m not, I don’t mean to be German bias, I love American cars, but like, you can look at an 85.

3 25 BMW, and it’s a nice, clean, minimalist interior that is totally damn reasonable today. Like you can look at it 40 years later, it’s totally fine. And you look at like a, what Americans are doing in the eighties, and they have these crazy LCDs, like it all looks like night rider animations and giant blo buttons and like some kinda weird sci-fi fighter cockpit interpretation.[00:15:00]

I struggle with it a bit. I I’m gonna be totally honest. I, I really, and the worst, worst stepdad

Mike Crutchfield: had a c4 and yeah, that giant green bar that went up and across the dashboard, they were

Mark Shank: cheap plastic. The thin, thin little crowd, cheap plastic, the buttons, uh, that’s, well, even the

Crew Chief Eric: C five, you think you’re in a trailblazer.

You’re like, what the hell is this? No offense to the Corvette owners, I’m just saying it’s not the best until the c sixes and sevens, when they got their act together. I mean, it was not the best of interiors, but Mount Mandan, you had a comment.

Mountain Man Dan: Chimed in saying that basically they were made with such cheap plastic that if you find something where something inside’s not broken, that’s a diamond in the rough ’cause, whether it be the mounting spot for the switches or something, they always broke.

But one thing I was gonna ask is if we’re going pour sports stuff and something that was quick, I’m gonna throw this out there. It’s not a car. I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. What about like the typhoon or the cyclone? The typhoon. You could still throw the rack.

Mark Shank: Ooh, ooh. I love those ideas. I love those ideas.

Mountain Man Dan: So they were fastest, could be up until [00:16:00] recently for trucks from the factory. Oh

Mark Shank: yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean they, they did a four and a half seconds, zero to 60 on the GMC cyclone and that thing, that record lasted until like, like the last Raptor or something. I mean, it was crazy. So, yeah, I, I love the cyclone idea.

I think that’s a ton of fun. I believe that had the Grand National motor in it. 3.8 Turbo. Yeah, the 3.8 Turbo, the intercooler. So I, I love, I love the grand, I love the Grand National. Uh, I love that motor. I realizing the Grand National is a little eighties, but that’s a great way to bring that power plant into the nineties.

So, yeah, no, I love

Mountain Man Dan: the Grand National was a 3.8 and the cyclone, uh, and the typhoon wore 4.3.

Mark Shank: I thought they were three eights. They were the same motor. Did they just, you like bore or stroke the motor? Was it a different power plant?

Mountain Man Dan: The 4.3, the easiest way to explaining it is a three 50 missing two cylinders.

Ah, okay. And everything is just six instead of eight cylinders. And even like front components and everything bolt up the same. One of the four, three off of the three 50 I

Crew Chief Brad: I see Mike is fact checking. Oh, we’re [00:17:00] Googling Mike’s always fact checking this right now. We’re Googling. It’s

Mike Crutchfield: the four three. He is

Crew Chief Brad: right.

Mike Crutchfield: Oh wow. Okay. Because Dan, of course, he’s right.

Mark Shank: What

Crew Chief Brad: about a GM

Mark Shank: can’t, you can’t argue with a mountain man.

Crew Chief Brad: I gotta finish this Chevy conversation and just get us off that train before we go down a road. We don’t ever, we can’t ever get back from, it’s true. To become a Chevy episode, I’m gonna go with the 3000 gt.

I like that. It’s my personal favorite. Everybody says the super or the RX seven, which, yes, they’re on my list as well, but the first time I ever saw a 3000 GT in a parking lot, I was like, oh my God, that is a beautiful Ferrari. I had no idea. I was like 12 years old or whatever. I don’t fucking know.

Mike Crutchfield: Save yourself some money,

Crew Chief Brad: get

Mike Crutchfield: a stealth.

It was, I was thinking the same thing. It was

Crew Chief Brad: just beautiful. It’s just a good looking car. All wheel drive. You can get the VR four, you can turbo the hell out of em.

Mark Shank: I love this idea as a kid, you read the car magazines, which I read religiously. My parents couldn’t get me to read a religious text, but I would read Car and Driver and MotorTrend every month that it came to my house and they would [00:18:00] always do the big three comparison, right?

The 300 zx, which is another car that was a nineties car but came out in 89 or whatever, right? A little before its time. It’s huge. Right? But they’d like a 300 Z zx, A mark four, 3000 GTVR four twin, you know, turbos and everything, and RX seven. And they do the comparison. And I always wanted the VR four to win.

’cause I thought it was the coolest looking car of the group by a mile. And it always got its ass kicked. It was

Crew Chief Brad: always the fastest in grand charisma

Mark Shank: though, the GTO and oh my. But it, it will like always lose ’cause it was so fat. The car weighed like 800 pounds more than all of its competitors. But it’s supposed to be a great GT car is supposed to drive really well.

It’s supposed to be a great driver’s car. I, I definitely like that idea. I wonder if the Dodge stealth is a little bit of a, uh, of a sleeper choice from our perspective of, you know, kind of not what people are expecting. I don’t think it’s as pretty particularly the late model VR fours. Right. So that’s a late one you show.

Yeah, and you know, ’cause they went away from the popup headlights I think [00:19:00] in 98, if I remember. Obviously not. Yeah. This is in 98. Not a stock inter 4 97, not a stock inter cooler on that, but yeah, no, I mean, yeah, I love them.

Crew Chief Eric: The only thing that worried me about the VR fours is if you’ve ever seen one under the hood, it’s transverse.

That’s the disadvantage I thought it always had against the 300 ZX or the Supra or whatever. Those being a classic, you know, front mount rear drive layout. The VR four was just like, ah, okay. So, so

Mark Shank: you wonder if in post life, in, in modification if you could help it get past that. Like, ’cause you’re right, it’s a front wheel bias all wheel drive system.

Because of that, it’s also got a lot of weight up front. So the weight distribution isn’t great, isn’t it? Like if you change the, the gear ratio a little bit between the front and the back, like that’s what they did with like, the focus rs where it was just like, like a, you know, a few percent faster in the back.

It puts a lot of pressure on the clutch in the middle, but it causes the power to go to the rear. Right? Uh, and, and, and you can kind of fix that bias in the, in the all wheel drive [00:20:00] system that way. But like, again. Because nobody’s really gotten into these cars yet. We’re just starting to get into this trend of 40 year olds having money and deciding they’re gonna dump it into this pit of car modification and whatever, restoration.

I don’t think people have really figured that out yet. Like you don’t see any great, well-documented path. Uh,

Crew Chief Eric: the only problem I have with the Japanese cars in this era is that we’ve already listed 80% of the good ones, right? Because if you, if you look, I mean, outside of the RX seven and all the ones that we’ve already mentioned, there’s a couple Sylvia’s, there’s some other cars that we didn’t get and things like that, that were Japanese only, but there wasn’t a whole lot of JDM offerings in the US that were really that awesome.

Oh God. Brad just put one up the

Crew Chief Brad: prelude. Oh, just for Brian? Just for Brian Sha who’s listening. Yeah. Because he’s listening to, he’s

Crew Chief Eric: listening to this screaming, what about the prelude? And I’m like,

Crew Chief Brad: there you go. But I don’t know how how much prelude, I don’t

Crew Chief Eric: know how much hoon you can do with that. Of less, you can’t

Crew Chief Brad: Front wheel drive, you got, it’s like 170 [00:21:00] horsepower or 200 in the sh

Mark Shank: Yeah, the sh I remember at the time that they made such a deal like that has a laser that measures the suspension and adjusts.

Ridiculous.

Crew Chief Eric: Was that the one with the four wheel steering or was it the Mitsubishi that had that? Yep.

Crew Chief Brad: Four wheel steering. Four wheel

Mark Shank: passive steering was, did they have the four wheel steering in that generation? I know they did in the, in the generation prior. I can’t, yeah. I believe it was in this generation as well.

Type R Integra, like if you’re throwing this up there. Yeah. Like that’s, that’s a 2000, 2001 car, but that’s like the pinnacle of nineties. You can’t get too much power out of those though. Or the civics, the civic type bars from that time. That’s just the money problem. Yeah. Too much power. You just gotta build the shit out of the motor.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, and this all the skylines, right? And the R 30 twos and 30 threes. I’ve been talking to some people, the 30 threes are becoming really popular because they were unwanted to begin with. The joke I heard was the R 32 skyline is the one you took to the track. The R 34 is the one you took to the shows and the drag races and the R 33 was the one you bought your wife.

But when I look at the R [00:22:00] 33, it’s kind of indicative of the nineties design in general. Just kind of this Mobius marshmallow on wheels, like they’re all kind of look the same after a while. But the one car it brings to my attention and I thought of, and it’s on my list and it’s kind of the same car, but in, in two different trims.

The Toyota Soer, which is also the Lexus SC 400. All right. Right. So you can hone the hell out of that thing because it’s basically a two JayZ, just like a Supra, right? So you go nuts. What? Well, the s SC 300

Crew Chief Brad: is, and then you do a two JayZ swap. The SC 400 was the V eight. It’s V eight.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, that’s right.

Mark Shank: Yeah.

But you get so, so yeah, I think, I think the Lexus SC is a great option to to think about. Right? That could be a lot of fun. And they had a manual that you could get with them. That would absolutely be really interesting. I think.

Crew Chief Eric: And you’re not paying the super tax either, right? You can have the same car, slightly larger, put your kids in it.

It’s a bit of a sleeper if you think about it in comparison. You can make 900 horsepower outta that two JayZ pretty easily.

Mark Shank: There’s a flip side to the Supertax though, which is like the supertax is the, the super is is [00:23:00] really the only one that is like really, I think. Really completely mature in regards to like, they’ve absolutely figured out every corner of that car, you can get reliably a ton of horsepower out of it.

You know, it’s gonna fail when you know how to make it work. There are no rabbit holes left or quests to, you know, don Kioti type things to try and figure out. I mean, don’t get me wrong, like, I’ve definitely been looking on eBay or, or auto trade or whatever, and be like, I could just buy this guy’s $150,000 car for 80 grand and you know, that would be pretty cool.

And, and, but then that’s somebody else’s build. I mean, exactly right. But like, you know, you’re, you’re getting it for 50 cents on the dollar and yeah, you go in and you fix whatever you gotta fix to get it sorted out. It’s not gonna be perfect when you get it by any means. You’ll certainly save a lot of money going into it that way.

Buy somebody else’s money pit and then get it sorted.

Mountain Man Dan: So what is the goal, intent for the vehicle? Is it gonna be something you street, something you track?

Mark Shank: Great, great question. I don’t see it being a racetrack. So [00:24:00] maybe, maybe quarter mile not to see that I’m like trying to, you know, make a nine second car or something.

But like, I think, I think it might be fun to take out the quarter mile, but yeah, no, I mean, mainly street drive around, have fun cars and coffee type deal. Take, take, take the kids somewhere, go to cars and coffee, remind them what cars used to be like my kids. I mean, not cars and coffee. They know. Um, and, uh, and, and, and have, just have some fun.

Hooligan is, I believe the word I picked at the beginning. That’s true. I’m gonna throw it out

Mountain Man Dan: there. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be good for carrying the kids around. But a two 40 sx, there’s a ton you can do with those.

Mark Shank: I loved those and the, and the little infinity variant of that, I forget what they called it, a G 20 or something maybe.

Yeah, that two 40 and the Infinity version absolutely would be a, well

Crew Chief Eric: the problem is for a hundred grand he can buy about 37 of those. ’cause there ain’t worth the damn

Crew Chief Brad: so, but they’re all missing their front bumpers ’cause they fell off at the drift circuit

Crew Chief Eric: a hundred percent. Right.

Mark Shank: Those are the ones they slow.

They [00:25:00] put the solid axles in.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, exactly. And it’s a 4, 3 0 2 under the hood,

Mountain Man Dan: the two 40. The problem is they’re so expensive ’cause the guys drifting them. They’ve all totaled them and wrecked ’em and destroyed them. But if you do wind up with a two 40, I just happened to have a body kit. That’s fun.

Crew Chief Eric: He said rolling his eyes.

Mike Crutchfield: So going back to a, uh, good old American car that fully fits the criteria. It’s, it’s at least not the, the, the earliest in 95. So the 1999 Ford Mustang Cobra, which was the first year of the more squared off design.

Crew Chief Eric: So that’s a SN 95. Right. But then there’s also, it’s an

Mike Crutchfield: SN 95 with the new body.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s also the 93 Cobra SVT, which is the last of the fox body.

So you kind of have it on both ends of the nineties, right. Depending on what you’re into. But even if you buy a fox body, I think you’re in the same camp that, like Bobby Parks is in, you throw the 3 0 2 in the trash and you put an LS in it and build like a 1200 horsepower monster. [00:26:00]

Mike Crutchfield: Well, but at least that one, the, the Cobra specifically comes with the independent rear.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s true.

Mark Shank: No, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re absolutely right. That’s a, that is a great car. I think it looks really cool. I think that’s a great option. I do like that it has independent rear suspension and, and that it’s, it’s gotten it. It’s funny how they went away from that later, right? In the later, uh, GT five hundreds, they, they put the solid axle back in.

It’s a good move by Ford, in my opinion.

Crew Chief Eric: Racer. Ron’s on the panel. Do we want get some input from him?

Mark Shank: So, um, I think you guys have a lot of

Ron Shurie: really

Crew Chief Eric: great

Ron Shurie: ideas. You’re throwing a lot of good stuff out there. The situation is balanced between how nice a machine you can get up front. It’s not low wrecked.

Like a, a two 40 is gonna be trash period. I mean, they just, and a lot of this stuff you

Mark Shank: get from Japan is trash too, right? It just is.

Ron Shurie: They’re all used up. So that’s totally outta the picture. But think with American iron is not a bad way to go from a lot of perspectives. You know, the least of them being, you can usually find someone to actually work on it.

That’s without spending a hell of a lot of money because the RAs, that’s a specialty [00:27:00] guy. You know, BMW guys are never real cheap, but. Doesn’t sound like you’re really gonna go the BMW direction. So I, I would definitely, well underestimate thinking about America. I mean, I would definitely be thinking strong about American Iron.

I like the GT 3000. I think it’s a good car. I think the, the W Series are also good cars. They’re complicated though, and they’re not cheap to work on either. Absolutely. So, um, yeah, it’s a tough call. You can do real well for. The Cobra. I mean, there’s no, there’s no two ways about it. You save yourself some money for another toy,

Crew Chief Brad: you just buy a couple of them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. Yeah. The Isuzu V Cross is one that you should totally do

Mark Shank: negative.

Mike Crutchfield: Oh, wait, no, the the one, the other one I brought up in chat is the Monte Carlo SS Tasmanian Devil Edition.

Mark Shank: Oh God.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh God. Hey, what the hell

Mike Crutchfield: They, they made

Crew Chief Eric: that, is that like the Bugs Bunny Venture van thing that they did?

Yes. Oh, it was, why don’t you just

Mark Shank: tell me to get the Dale Earnhardt edition?

Mike Crutchfield: Well, so more of the Dale Earnhardt [00:28:00] ones, they had the Intimidator and then they had the Dale Junior Edition. And then the head, the Tasmanian Devil Edition.

Crew Chief Eric: Okay. We’ve talked about Americans, we talked about Japanese. You alluded to some Italians there at the beginning.

Let’s talk about the Italians for a second.

Crew Chief Brad: Fiat,

Crew Chief Eric: yeah. The, yeah, for sure. A hundred percent. That’s, that’s a winner. You know, FF 3 55. I mean, as good looking and evolution of the three series as they are, they have a horror story, you know, nightmare reputation behind them for reliability. But there’s a couple other Italians behind that same era that I think are better, maybe as a sleeper if you’re thinking about going in that direction.

What about the Maserati 3,200 GT precursor to the coupe?

Mark Shank: Is that the evolution of the buy turbo? Was it like the same chassis and setup or

Crew Chief Eric: negative? So it’s, it’s the swoopy one that kind of looks like an astin or a jag, which later become coupe. And then like the current body style that it’s now, it’s like the beginning of that lineage.

Mark Shank: So they [00:29:00] sold 27 of them in the United States? I, I think so, yes. Yeah. Um, speaking of finding somebody to work on, no. I mean, actually I don’t know anything about that car. It wasn’t on my radar, so it sounds really interesting. I like the idea of, of learning about that. I really don’t know much about it, you know, which is, I don’t have too many gaps, but that’s definitely one of them.

I also don’t know any shit about French cars from the nineties either. Don’t bother. It’s not worth it.

Mike Crutchfield: I was gonna say, just pack a lot of wine and cheese for when you’re broken down on the side of the road if you buy French.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. So Brad has a picture of it. Wait, he, wait. It’s that.

Mark Shank: Because they made that car up until like 2008.

I know. ’cause I lived in San Diego. It got re everyone drove one,

Crew Chief Eric: it got renamed to the coupe. And so originally it was the 3,200 gt. Ah. And so that’s, that’s what it’s, it’s the precursor to those, you know, what we know now to be kind of the current, you know, lineage of Maseratis, but there’s so, so,

Mark Shank: so that was like the, so that was like the early grand there mode of today.

Correct. Yeah. Those things were so popular in San Diego. You could pick that car up like [00:30:00] four or five years old with 25,000 miles on it for 20 grand.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. It’s a bargain really. I mean, and it’s a Ferrari power plant and all the fun stuff that goes along with that. But it’s not a Ferrari. Right. So.

Mark Shank: Yeah, I don’t, yeah, we’re gonna put air

Crew Chief Eric: quotes around it.

I don’t know. The one,

Mark Shank: I don’t know. I mean, did they make a manual with it? Because later they didn’t and they only had a single clutch. Correct. Automated, you know, pseudo manual. And that clutch was seven grand to replace and it went out about every 6,000 miles. And I know because my boss had one.

Mike Crutchfield: And does that, that fun?

Does that fun stuff at the Ferrari engine include removing the engine from the car every like 5,000 miles to completely rebuild it?

Crew Chief Eric: No, no. The fun stuff is open pipes, so you could really hear it sing. That’s what I was doing. Yeah. No, I mean,

Mark Shank: don’t me wrong, the sound was great. So my boss had had one of those, although it was like a 2008 or whatever, but the sound was great.

The intake noise was a ton of fun. Like I, I love, like you could hit the gas and you just hurt. It sounded like an angry dragon was sucking in air and it was really cool. So the, the engine was great. It’s fat, it is a, it is a [00:31:00] big, it is bigger than it looks. Yes. Like a lot of cars are the other way around.

That thing is bigger than it looks and it weighs like 4,200 pounds.

Crew Chief Eric: Speaking of bigger than it looks. And also coming from Italy. How about the five 50 Martinello?

Mark Shank: You can’t get those for a hundred grand anymore. I would love to get one and, and, and, and if I was smart, I would instead of buying. This would’ve bought a five 50 Marella for a hundred grand.

It’d be worth 200 grand a day. You cannot find a good five 50 for a hundred grand anymore. If we can please point me in the direction. Yeah. Right. But the five fiftys were cool ’cause they were manual only, which I actually think is why the, the values have gone out so much as opposed to like a 4, 5, 6 or something else.

3

Crew Chief Eric: 55 or whatever. Yeah.

Mark Shank: The five 50 was only that six B gated and the, the valuations have literally doubled in like the last four years. It’s crazy. I seen, what is that, an RSS six A nineties RS six. It’s a by turbo. S four B

Crew Chief Brad: five. S four Oh, okay. By Turbo. Yeah. We didn’t get a ton of power out of ’em. Not very reliable, but they’re fun to look at.

Mark Shank: Audi, Audi was still in the doghouse in the nineties, so it [00:32:00] was a huge gap for me. I only knew one person who, whose family had an Audi and they, they weren’t in the car magazines. They like, they were just, you know, you’d read about, you’d read about AMGs, you’d read about Mcar, but like Audi just didn’t exist until the naughties.

It was like it just disappeared and then came back.

Crew Chief Brad: When I was in high school, I knew one person who had an Audi and his entire family had about 50 of them, and he’s in that other screen up there.

Crew Chief Eric: That is true. We’ve had way too many, we, we lived through the nineties Audis, man. But you know, speaking of, since we’re talking about Audis right now, it makes sense to bring up the S eight from Ronan.

That’s a late nineties car and it’s also a sleeper. You know, we’re talking. Well,

Mark Shank: that’s a great idea. I love you guys. That suggestion made this whole thing worth it. I love that idea. I’m not saying I’m gonna do it definitively, but like I wasn’t even thinking about dinner. Curry. I love Ronan. I mean, you know, all his cool, uh, double clutching was in a EO, I think, but whatever.

Yeah, great idea. Love it. Put some, [00:33:00] yeah. In those cars

Crew Chief Eric: back then you’re talking somewhere, you know, south of 400 horsepower, but it’s easy to untap the four two and get more power out of it.

Mark Shank: Well, well hang really quick as we’re, as we’re going down this path with the, with the Audis. What, what about some engine swaps?

I, I, it’s kind of kicking around some ideas, right? Like, what if I put the E 39 M five motor, which I, pardon me, I forget the designation. S 62 or something. I don’t remember the E 39 M five motor, but like, put that in an E 40. I think there might be an opportunity to create, ’cause I do want something that’s kind of unique.

I think there might be some fun ideas around around doing something like that. I’m wondering if you guys have any, that’s Pandora’s box. Crazy, crazy thoughts on thematically appropriate engine swaps. Right. So like one of the coolest cars I think I’ve ever seen is an original two 40 Z, like a 1971 or two or whatever that had a skyline, but like a, mm-hmm like an R 33.

In line six dropped in it, right? And it was like, here it is kind of, you know, four generations later of that motor of the original inline six [00:34:00] in there. Obviously not for a nineties car, but like what, what do we think might be a, a thematically cool engine swap type idea.

Mike Crutchfield: It’s probably not a popular opinion.

A lot of people call it a hairdresser’s car, but I actually like the eight series.

Crew Chief Eric: It was on my list as well as one of my top, the three suggestions.

Mark Shank: I definitely liked the eight series I I was, I was so disappointed as a kid that, how slow they were, because they looked so fast, they looked badass. I mean they looked so cool and then they were like not actually fast.

Even the V 12 was just kinda like, why did you put a V 12 in it if that’s all it’s gonna do.

Crew Chief Eric: And there’s three different motor packages for the V 12. There’s like a five oh, a five four and a five six or something like that. So if you’re gonna get one, you get the later one because at least they figured it out and you get slightly more horsepower.

So, so be it.

Matt Yip: The biggest problem that the uh, V twelves ran into was the early V twelves were nothing but two six cylinders. The failure points were enormous. Like the throttle bodies were $1,500 a piece. Oh. And they failed in pairs. They failed in pairs, which apparently was bad. [00:35:00] You know, the, the one thing you hadn’t mentioned, you’re talking about Audis and you know, the A a A and the A A L were neat cars, but I had probably the more advanced version of that because of the time period and the technology.

Which was the original Audi V eight. They were, from a technology standpoint, amazing. But you know, they also used probably some of the worst technology ever available.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, let’s make a V eight by taking two 16 valves and putting ’em together. Right. I mean, it’s a kind of, that’s what they were doing back then.

’cause I don’t know why.

Mark Shank: That’s what Ford did to Aston Martin. Right, exactly. As soon as they bought ’em, they’re like, here, take this Ford Taurus and times it by two.

Crew Chief Eric: If we’re still talking about the Audis, I mean like to Brad’s point, I mean we grew up at one point I think we had three Coop Quatros, right?

But that was the beginning of the nineties. So that was the beginning of the round period, right? Where it’s like, okay, here’s a marshmallow and, and four wheels. So those early Audis kind of all look the same. You know, the 90 Cs sport, the, the Quatro, all that kind of stuff. Even the 100, [00:36:00] they weren’t anything to write home about.

But it’s not until you got to the B five S four or to the S eight where it kind of, they started to change their mind and started to go in an aggressive direction. And then, you know, Audi now is, is 180 out from there again. So I think there’s some cool stuff there. It’s just a matter of digging deeper and seeing what you can do.

Crew Chief Brad: So to Eric’s point, I’ve got your car for you right now. Alright, let’s do it. It’s an Audi coop. Quattro. It’s in Eric’s garage right now. It’s got a motor swap. It’s already done. It’s true. It just needs some TLC. He’ll sell you to you for a hundred grand right now.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s true. It is an S eight motor in there, so it’s 400 horse and it was featured in European car for anybody that’s listening many, many years ago, so.

Wow. So it’s a

Crew Chief Brad: famous car too. Look at that. That’s true. Original one-off, original six speed manual.

Mark Shank: Does it? Does it cut? Do you have original? You have the, do you have the magazine article like Uh, yeah, you have. There you go.

Crew Chief Eric: Yep. Well, that was the only one that ran in the country, if I recall. That’s true.

And then we did a Ur Quatro with a three six swap from the car that [00:37:00] Matt was talking about, the original VA Quatro. So we had two kind of unicorns at the time, but that other

Crew Chief Brad: car is no longer available, but he’s still got the one for sale. A hundred grand.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. I’ll take offers a hundred percent. I

Crew Chief Brad: have dollars.

Crew Chief Eric: But you know, since we talked about Audi and you know, we, we’ve, we’ve touched on some cars that might be unreliable. Let’s talk about British cars for a minute. And Brad flashed up the esprit. So what do you think about that?

Mark Shank: I loved those cars when I was a kid. I, there, I think getting a lot of power out of ’em was the problem.

It was nothing cooler. Was that V eight any good? I know it was like a 3.5 liter twin turbo. V eight. No, the transmission

Crew Chief Eric: was the best part of that car.

Mark Shank: You’re gonna swap it. Wasn’t the transmission in French?

Crew Chief Eric: No, it was out of a mano. Apparently

Matt Yip: the mano gets a bad rap. It really wasn’t a bad car.

Mark Shank: They loved the mon and old top gear.

They, they talked about the mon. They talked about the mon, like it was the greatest family car you could ever buy.

Mike Crutchfield: Oh, it was everywhere in Germany too,

Matt Yip: because you did a billion things to it and we called it the Jaguar X type in this country. [00:38:00] Yes. Yeah. Or the SVT contour, which the SVD contour was a, was a surprisingly nice car.

In fact, I have a friend who has one that’s 200,000 miles on it. Original clutch. And they were neat cars. I mean, they were small cars too. But you know, remember that this is in a time period when a big car was what, a five series? Yeah. And what’s five series size today? It’s like a, it’s like a three.

You’re,

Mark Shank: that, that I always said about my F 82 or 85 M three that I bought, the 2015 M three that I bought, it was the E 39. I always wanted, that generation of three series is bigger than that nineties, five series, you know, and, and it was like, this is, this is the M five that I want. Of course the M five now is a boat.

Oh, I so, and so I’m just buying the M three. But since we’re

Crew Chief Eric: talking about engine swaps, the Brits are pretty famous for jamming weird motors in kind of just normal cars. And that’s why I wanted to bring up and talk about the Brits, because the answer here in America. Is LS swap the world. We already know that.

So there’s no other [00:39:00] swap to do over there.

Mark Shank: It’s the Land Rover V eight and and all the things, but I came across two cars and

Matt Yip: the And the Land Rover.

Mark Shank: No. Tell us. Tell us, what about the Land Rover?

Matt Yip: The Land Rover V eight sucks. There’s nothing to write home about because it’s nothing but the three nine redone and the later ones the four fours and the four sixes are BM BMW motors, which is fine, but they’re BM BMW motors.

Mark Shank: Yeah, I think that’s, I think they use, I think they use them over there simply because that’s what they have available.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s very true. So speaking of cars that have BM BMW motors swapped into them from the factory, and this is why I wanted to bring up British cars. What about the Bentley Arage, which came with a 4.4 liter turbocharge BMW engine, or the optional six and three quarter liter turbo and that’s another sleeper?

Mark Shank: I’m not sure I have the patience. To own one of those cars in the sense that it’s gonna spend at least six months out of the year in the shop. You know? And then looking at the gap of my garage more, more days than it’s filled would be [00:40:00] difficult because you’re gonna be waiting for parts forever.

Crew Chief Eric: So the other one I came up on the Brit list, and they are famous for, this is Jaguar.

Are we talking

Mark Shank: J?

Crew Chief Eric: We are talking jets.

Mark Shank: JI drive a J

Crew Chief Eric: and it’s the XJR with the supercharged four liter, it makes 370 horsepower, zero to 60 and 5.6 seconds, and electronically limited to 155 miles an hour. I think that car’s kind of cool because it’s understated. It’s a jag. You’re like, ah, it’s a jag like anything else.

But it’s gonna put you in your place from traffic light to traffic light.

Mark Shank: Yeah, I think the, the XJR is great. The, the old X Ks, I mean, it still kind of looks like an eighties car, but man. You look at that. That’s, that’s such, I I still think it’s such a cool looking car and I don’t know when they came out with a more modern looking xk.

That might have been like 99 or something. No, I mean, I think Jags, they’re so good looking and in the nineties I think you still get some of that authentic British, uh, cigar library type feel to it, [00:41:00] whereas like by the two thousands that that’s turned into some cartoonish caricature of itself.

Matt Yip: The, the XJ was a sleeper too, because

Crew Chief Eric: like the M five, you really had to look at it to notice the differences.

Exactly, and that’s why I brought that car up. I think it’s a fantastic option if you’re looking for a sleeper that you can hone around in, no one will expect that Jag to be able to put that kind of power down and being supercharged, turn the wick up to 11 and see what happens. Right.

Mark Shank: Put some pulleys on it.

Bigger intercoolers. See what you can do

Mountain Man Dan: when, when you’re speaking of like the cars from either England or Europe in general. The little thing that I was doing a while back. Is if you go into like eBay co uk, which is England’s eBay, you go in there and look for the car you’re interested in and then shipping it over here, even buying it their price and shipping it, you’re still in it for less than half of what people here states.

I would be selling the same car.

Mark Shank: So I’ve spent a lot of time in London for work. I have to spend a bunch of time at Canary Wharf and the um, the used car values are so low. It’s crazy how cheap because they’re [00:42:00] so afraid of gasoline prices. So the crazy asshole buys it new ’cause they love the car and they don’t care how much they’re gonna pay for petrol and 80 billion pounds per English gallon or whatever.

They don’t care. But then used, it’s worth nothing. Absolutely. So I had some coworkers that repa, you know, Patriot, ated over there, immigrated, I, we should just say immigration. I think that’s, they’re immigrants. The, but the point being is that they, uh, they’re over there now and they love the cars. Like they’re, they’re buy, they, they’re so excited about the crap they can buy and how cheap it is.

You’re absolutely right. That’s a great, that’s a great thought. Buying it and shipping it from there is still cheaper. Now you end up with a right hand drive car, particularly with now you’re shifting stick left-handed. Certainly I’m

Crew Chief Eric: ambidextrous. I don’t know about you when it comes to shifting.

Ron Shurie: Let’s, that’s kind like fat too.

I’d like to bring up another car. Can we introduce another, another mark? Absolutely. Ron, go ahead, Panos.

Crew Chief Eric: I have that on my list. The ante. Esper,

Ron Shurie: [00:43:00] man. I mean, out of the box hauls ass gorgeous car. And it’s made with American Iron.

Crew Chief Eric: It is a modular Ford under, under the hood.

Ron Shurie: Yep. So, so I just wanted to bring it up because I, I love those cars.

They’re, they’re just beautiful cars.

Mark Shank: Pull a picture

Mike Crutchfield: up, Brad. I haven’t, I don’t think I’ve seen one of these, uh, Esper

Ron Shurie: made, made in Georgia.

Mike Crutchfield: You need to find one of Brett’s disassembled. One.

Matt Yip: The nice thing about the five liter Ford is if you can’t add power to a five liter Ford, you should really give up.

Yeah, it’s like, it’s like a small black Chevy. I mean, that’s a good looking car.

Mark Shank: We haven’t talked about, we haven’t talked about T That makes me think of the Tvrs.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes, that was on my list. The Serra,

Mark Shank: the Ser, the Erra was, was so hot in video games. Even. Even some of you know what some of the eighties tvrs look like, nineties cars.

They were always so far ahead of their time and being out there, uh, you know, fiberglass, crazy assholes that they were. I think tv, that’s a really fun option. I’ve been thinking so much. I’ve been [00:44:00] trolling JDM sites about like buying something in Japan. I’m importing it over and like I haven’t even looking at the uk and that could be a lot of fun.

Crew Chief Eric: And you can get skylines from the UK as well. And they’re a lot cheaper than getting ’em from Japan. A lot of people don’t realize that. So we don’t

Mark Shank: mention Morgan.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, I mean they’ve looked the same since like 1920. Right. So I mean, can you So, so

Mark Shank: they, they make that, they, they made in the nineties they had that four.

So of course they have the three wheeler. No thanks. But they made that, the arrow they made forever in the, they had that in the nineties and back then it was still wood frame, which assuming it hasn’t been beaten out or something might be interesting.

Matt Yip: No, but they, they made an arrow, which was different because the Morgan like four four and four eight or whatever the hell they were, those were the classic look that arrow eight or whatever the hell it was.

It was almost like a cartoon. When they redid the body,

Mark Shank: it was like a cartoon gangster car.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, exactly. That’s across from, from

Mark Shank: prohibition. Like if, if somebody from Prohibition smoked did some LSD or [00:45:00] something and then we’re like, yeah, we’re gonna see this.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, Brad just threw up a suggestion. What you got there, Brad

Mark Shank: show?

I thought they didn’t make this car. They didn’t, did they make this car? I remember I’ve seen

Crew Chief Brad: one in person at an autocross.

Mark Shank: Yeah, but they only made like five. I remember watching a documentary, I remember watching a show in the nineties where Shelby was doing donuts in that car. Probably that exact same car.

He was still alive. Dirt.

Matt Yip: We had a guy here who had a, he owned a do it yourself garage and he had the Shelby one,

Mike Crutchfield: two hundred and forty nine were built

Mark Shank: 249. That’s more nice. That’s a lot more than I thought. That’s really cool. Yeah, it’s, it was 80 K new, if I remember correctly, from my childhood. I’ve seen

Crew Chief Brad: one in person though.

They’re slick.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, but it doesn’t look too different than the Payos though. In all. In all. No, I think

Mark Shank: they were competitors here. Here’s something we haven’t thought about. You know what else blew up in the nineties in car culture Kit? Cars?

Crew Chief Eric: Yes.

Mark Shank: COBRA Kit. Car. Like I’ve, I keep looking at COBRA kits. One of my coworkers has [00:46:00] a great back draft with a BMW three series suspension in it.

So it’s independent rear multi league front, and you Ford racing crepe motor in it. Ah, man, I It’s the back, but then you just, you’re just

Crew Chief Brad: taking a car that may have come out in the nineties, but it’s based off a car from like the sixties.

Mark Shank: It is, but, but it’s definitely a more, it, it is certainly an interpretation of it though.

It, it is not that. That, that original car, but that was just such a craze. Right. And you remember, you remember walking around as a kid, you’d see these kit cars like everywhere. Like you don’t see too many Cobra kits out on the road. Mm-hmm. I remember back then used to see ’em all the damn time.

Crew Chief Brad: There’s also the, the Ferrari kit cars that were built off.

The Firo. The

Mark Shank: Osh off the Fiero.

Crew Chief Brad: I think Dan’s got one buried in his property somewhere.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh my God. Not yet.

Crew Chief Brad: Not yet.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh my God. That’s terrible. So since we’re still sort of talking about British cars, there’s one that we’ve probably forgotten about, which I happen to stumble across, which was the Aston DB seven, the first really modern looking gorgeous, correct?[00:47:00]

Correct.

Matt Yip: The the acid Martin Jaguar XJ. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Understated, underappreciated. Probably mostly forgotten at this point because of the DB nine and the DB nine s and all the successors. An affordable nineties car. If you’re looking for something quasi exotic,

Mark Shank: if you can find, if you can find one with a manual in it.

Crew Chief Eric: Wasn’t that a, a

Matt Yip: supercharged six cylinder?

Mark Shank: I believe it was. I think the DB seven was the first time they put the four Taurus v sixes together and made the V 12. Oh,

Matt Yip: yeah. But I thought they had a straight six, DB seven.

Crew Chief Eric: I think I’d have to go back and double check. But there’s all these, there’s always those packages and swap outs.

The Brits that love doing that, like, oh, we created a body and let’s jam another motor in it, you know, call it something else.

Mark Shank: I have a memory of them selling DB Sevens pretty well. In fact, I remember that being the first time I actually really saw people driving in Aston Martin. You’d have to go down to Potomac or somewhere where there were rich people, but like, no, certainly not in Frederick.

Matt Yip: That was the first quote unquote new. Aston Martin. And how long since? Since the nda?

Mark Shank: I think it was the war. [00:48:00]

Matt Yip: Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah. Well that was, that’s always been the British philosophy. Why invent something new and you can continue to use what you’ve been doing for 50 years.

Mark Shank: Could put a Dodge Caravan up there.

Huh?

Mike Crutchfield: The ultimate nineties car. A brand new hell cat. Red Eye.

Mark Shank: Yes. ’cause it is a 1998 Mercedes eClass Go. With a 900 horsepower V eight in it. It was everything a MG wanted to do in the nineties, but couldn’t.

Crew Chief Brad: Nineties car. Why did not talk about the Pontiac Sunfire? I just want to know.

Crew Chief Eric: It reminds me of the Chevy Cavalier

Mark Shank: had, I would, I would love to get a Pontiac Sun, Pontiac Sunfire.

I did have a 1989 Chevy Cavalier first car, but I would love to get one just to pour gasoline on it later on fire.

Crew Chief Eric: And what will you do with the remaining $99,550 to spend? Yeah.

Mountain Man Dan: Something else. Well, I’m gonna throw it out there. What is it? The, uh, Volvo C 70, I think it was.

Crew Chief Eric: I like [00:49:00] those from the Saints or the, the, so,

Mark Shank: the sobs you like.

Yeah. You can’t ignore Volvos and sobs. Yeah, you can.

When did, when did, when did the eight 50 R come out? Was that 2000 or 2001? I don’t know. I feel like it was kind of a

Crew Chief Eric: No, the eight 50, well, the eight 50 R maybe, but the eight 50 turbos, those were out in the nineties.

Mike Crutchfield: Yeah, and they look exactly like that. Dodge Caravan.

Crew Chief Eric: I

Ron Shurie: had one, I had a, I had a 1995 H, 50 T five R.

It was only for one year because the R were only the first and second year. Fantastic car. I loved it.

Matt Yip: Well that was probably the absolute first Volvo in like what, 30 years? It was not such, you know, the V 1800 was a cool car.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, I agree.

Matt Yip: You know. Then what’d you end up with? Two 40 and the 2 42? You know, look, look at us.

Drive boxes. They’re safe

Ron Shurie: and they’re fast. Those are fast as as well, man.

Matt Yip: And you’re talking about motor swaps is. Remember the car that Paul Newman drove? It was a seven 40 with a five liter Ford because it fits.

Crew Chief Eric: [00:50:00] Yeah, that’s true. That was pretty cool. They drove that car on, uh, an episode of, uh, Seinfeld’s Comedian’s Cars and Coffee with, like, David Letterman has one as well that Paul Newman built for him.

It’s a, it’s a cool sleeper. And if you go back to your engine swap thing, I think Matt’s right on it. I mean, it’s like a Volvo. Make it 400 horse with a Ford crate motor in it. That’s kind of cool actually. Oh, Brad’s onto something. I’m going in that direction. So let’s talk about Germans

Mark Shank: get a hammer. That would be great.

I could do a hammer tribute. That would be a lot of fun.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, I was thinking Braas, pick yourself up a bras Mercedes because people have forgotten about those cars and that’s a precursor to the AMGs that we’re used to today.

Mark Shank: Absolutely. Well, I mean, I think by the nineties. A MG had definitely, Braas was the, the underdog by that point, A MG had really blown up.

But no, I, I think the thing that’s hard to appreciate though is they, they really, the, the volumes were so low, like on those, they’re genuinely, it, genuinely hard to find. But I agree. I think that’s a great idea. Problem. Of course, Mercedes never put a [00:51:00] manual in anything.

Matt Yip: True, true. They, they did, but only in the one 90 E.

Mark Shank: Yeah. Or the diesels or something crazy.

Crew Chief Brad: Hold on, but before we go there, so manual is a requirement.

Mark Shank: I won’t say that it is a requirement. I’m pretty open, but it there, there’s gonna have to be some real compelling things that bring me in. I, I mean, I love that car behind you. I love those wheels. God, those are so cool.

Crew Chief Brad: This is the 500 e with the Porsche, uh, drive. Train,

Mark Shank: yeah. The ones that Porsche did the drive, train, assembly on. Yeah. Yeah. I, I love that car. I think that’s a very fun idea right there.

Mountain Man Dan: But that just makes you a European taxi cab driver.

Mark Shank: I don’t, you know what, no one in Carroll County knows what a European taxi cab driver drives.

I guarantee you.

Mountain Man Dan: That’s true. I’ll give you that.

Mark Shank: That’s very bad. I taxi cabs. Why? About why not a Crown Vic? Yeah, I was gonna say no Impala ss no Mercury Marauder. They’re both great cars. I don’t want one.

Matt Yip: Well, the real, the real sleeper Mercedes is not the 500 E, but the 400 E because that was a 300 E with a V eight.[00:52:00]

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, interesting.

Matt Yip: So it looked just like the 300. Except it happens to have a V eight in. They were nice cars. They weren’t as exclusive as the 500. But they also weren’t nearly as pricey or as, not finicky, but just fragile isn’t even the right word. When stuff breaks into 500 E, you just kind of bend over with a 400 E.

A lot of it’s just off the shelf for safety,

Crew Chief Eric: which I guess could be the same about the sl. Right? So the SL 500 I always thought was a gorgeous car, but to your point, doesn’t come in a manual. I guess one of the criteria I was gonna

Mark Shank: do an sl. I definitely do the 600 because V 12.

Matt Yip: And the biggest problem with the SL 600 is it’s a fucking whale.

It’s so heavy.

Mark Shank: You’re not getting shit outta That’s so

Crew Chief Brad: I’m gonna throw out another idea. It’s a car that’s on the uh, panel right now that might be for sale if you gave enough money. It’s a manual. It’s German, it’s [00:53:00] four doors with a V eight. It’s a seven 40.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, that’s true. With a manual swap. Yeah. See that’s another swap.

You were talking about engine swaps. Talking about tranny swaps, right?

Mark Shank: Yeah, so, so the one thing that’s really distracted me from this to go a little afield of nineties car has been a Ferrari F four 30 with a manual swap. It’s like you buy an F four 30 for 80 grand, you, you put a $25,000 transmission swap in it and you have a very, very cool fucking car.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s true. I’ll give you that. I could see that as a valid distraction.

Mark Shank: I always struggled with my last M three because had that electronic differential, I had to like think about what the computer was gonna decide to do with the diff and, and that’s what I love. The difference with the, the manual GT threes is they put a mechanical differential in it, whereas with the pks, they, they go electronic and, and they, they try to go best track time.

But like, I, I agree with you. It, it was distracting, like where I thought the backend would step out on me on the M three. Like, I’d even get to the point where like, [00:54:00] I, I was about to like, try to counter steer and then, yeah. And then the diff would fix it and I’m just like, what the, I can’t, I can’t stay ahead of you.

What, what are you doing?

Matt Yip: I, I had friends who had the newer a g cars. The thing I dislike the most about them is it saves you. It saves you from stupidity, it saves you from anything you wanna do to it. And I said this many times before, I like cars. You have to respect the fact that anybody can get in there and push the pedal to the floor, turn the wheel sometimes and let the car fix the rest of it.

There’s no challenge in that. There’s no fun in that.

Mark Shank: I couldn’t agree more. You know, the, the Viper mentality, they didn’t put traction control in until they were federally mandated to, you know, your traction control is the pedal and your, and your,

Matt Yip: and your, and your brain.

Mark Shank: Well, it’s funny, it’s funny that you say that.

I’ve, I’ve heard a lot about on the nineties cars that like when you try to track them, the a BS can get really confused and it can can

Crew Chief Brad: Oh yeah, yeah, it can,

Mark Shank: it can actually think it’s on ice and so then it doesn’t break [00:55:00] very effectively. Sometimes like it, it gets confused and then you can’t break into a turn and you hit a wall.

Mike Crutchfield: E 36 is love to do that. That’s

Mountain Man Dan: true. I was gonna say, I’m surprised it’s taken this long for the Viper to be mentioned.

Crew Chief Eric: God damnit. I was saving it. I was saving it. That’s my

Mountain Man Dan: crown jewel. I know, I, I I figured you would’ve led with your favorite car, but, you know, no, save the

Crew Chief Eric: best for last.

Mountain Man Dan: You gotta start at the top.

You know, I’m gonna break it down to a complete bare basic one. It’s where you can fit multiple in a place of one vehicle if you want to.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh God.

Mountain Man Dan: Just an Austin Mini Cooper. I mean, they’re cool

Crew Chief Eric: ass fun little cars to drive. Yeah. And they built them forever. They were the same up until the, the, the Fatties came out.

I mean, the, the new Minis came out, but, uh, not the, not,

Mark Shank: not the BM BMW Mini. The real Mini,

Crew Chief Eric: correct, correct. Yeah. They built those in England up until the two thousands in the old style.

Mark Shank: Yep. I love all parts of Karcher. I, I appreciate the minis for what they are, but it’s not, it just doesn’t, it’s not, you doesn’t get me out of bed in the morning.

I think, I think the Viper, you know, we talked a [00:56:00] little bit about like cars that. The best 90 cars, nineties cars being made in 2001 or oh two. Yes. The best nineties viper from 2016 would be a great purchase.

Crew Chief Eric: You can still buy those new today on any Dodge Lot, so you can

Mark Shank: still go, you can still find a Dodge dealer that never sold that

Crew Chief Eric: car.

Mark Shank: They’re sitting right next to the Dodge Dart

Crew Chief Eric: and the PT Cruiser. At any rate, shout out

Crew Chief Brad: to Romano.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s right. A hundred percent. The Viper is number one on my list by far. But in your case, see, I’m, I’m a, I’m a, I’m like a purist. I want a Targa. I just, I just want a Targa because it’s the original, it’s like a Cobra, the whole nine yard attack.

Mark Shank: And they, when they first came out with that GTS where I Exactly, that’s where I was going. I still, I still remember when I was, I must, I think it was a junior in high school when they first came outta GTS, the odd, that car was gorgeous, so it still is. White, great looking car, loose stripes and that hood scoop.

Nobody had hood scoops back then, except the WS six. Of course. Thing was, was uh, was evil looking. It was great. They’re

Crew Chief Eric: [00:57:00] sub a hundred. You can still get a GTS coop for less than you

Matt Yip: guys are missing. You guys are missing the, uh, the best price for product. That was not a viper. I showed that’s a low

Mark Shank: bar.

Just so we’re clear. It’s a low, low bar, but go ahead please tell us

Matt Yip: the SRT 10 truck.

Mark Shank: Yes. Yes. Put that V 10 in the truck. It was a great car, great truck. I drove

Matt Yip: one of those and that’s. It was the craziest fucking thing I’ve ever driven. I’ve driven, I’ve driven lightning. The SRT 10 truck is way more,

Mark Shank: fuck, I, I, I go, I think I go cyclone though.

I think I’d go cyclone. Yeah, I agree with you on

Matt Yip: that.

Mike Crutchfield: To drive home the dangerousness of the original vipers. I was talking to another instructor at an HPDE and he said one day a guy showed up in a viper and uh, he was talking to, to his coach. He goes, yeah, yeah, this is my third viper. I totaled the other two, so I figured I better learn how to drive it.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh God.

Mike Crutchfield: And then he totaled the third one at the track.

Crew Chief Eric: I still want one. [00:58:00] I don’t care. I still want

Mark Shank: one. That’s that, that reminds me of the C five Corvettes. Right? Like those things could snap on you so quick. Of course, I had that 85 Porsche nine 11 in big iron block way out in the back. Right? This was before they started inching it forward.

Every generation. That thing almost killed me once, and the, the idea of having to like feather a throttle to like, so like you, you screwed up. Like too little or too much, and just this idea that you just kind of have to bounce on it to keep yourself from dying was, uh, yeah. Widow makers are funny.

Mike Crutchfield: So I just heard something.

I can’t believe I just heard a Porsche owner admitting that the motor was too far back and they have to keep moving forward.

Mark Shank: Oh, those eighties cars the Right, I mean, so it was this huge iron lump, especially if you took some of the parts out, right? You’re in a 2200 pound car with this, all this weight out back.

Yeah, no, it was, it was really, really hard to hold a drift more skill than I, than I have. I couldn’t do it. And so the couple times the backend really got out on me was kind of like [00:59:00] puckering type moments.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, since we’re talking about German cars, now that we have left a few on the table, I think, and we talked about Mercedes and whatnot, we’ve mentioned a few BMWs.

What about

Mark Shank: another Porsche? I’d love this idea. I think my next family car will probably be a tie can or something. Sure. What are you thinking?

Crew Chief Eric: I’ve got a couple favorites all in the nineties, so I’ll just rattle ’em off real quick. 9 68, 9 64, 9 64 RS America, 9 93, 9 28 S four or GTS

Matt Yip: 9 68 was a fine car. Its biggest problem was it was a four cylinder, which wasn’t very exciting for buyers.

Crew Chief Eric: If you could find a club sport though, whole different animal compared to the stock 9 68. Yeah. ’cause

Mark Shank: they cut the

Crew Chief Eric: counter. Sure.

Matt Yip: Well, and and it took everything, it took a lot of what the 9 44 had, which was phenomenal weight, balance, and spectacular handling, and added something that the nine 40 fours never had.[01:00:00]

You know, I mean, nine four, dare you impuning the turbo.

Mark Shank: The problem with the 9 68 would be getting real power up. Agree. Because they were 230 horse back in the day. Three liter.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Nothing fancy.

Mark Shank: You know, the four cylinders is a little tricky. You know, you’re right. The, the non-cloud, like the originals, they, they had a really heavy counterweight, kind of made the motor not as much fun to try and make a smoother German driving experience.

I love the idea of a 9 28. It is the coolest car from the eighties that was launched in the seventies and made through 1998. Yeah. Right. But it’s, it is the coolest car of the eighties. I would totally love a, a 94 or five or whatever, if you can find ’em. I mean, those cars cost so much. Damn. Like the late model ones, those cars cost so much money.

So I, I had this idea I was kicking around earlier of, there was a shop in Pennsylvania, I can’t remember the name now, but they do, they do a lot of work on 9 28 motors to get through emissions. They launched the 32 valve in the 85, like so you can find a cheap 9 28 and make a hot rod out of that [01:01:00] as opposed to trying buy a four s or something, which, you know, is just, those cars are $70,000 or whatever.

Unrestored.

Mountain Man Dan: I just have to do a quick correction there, mark, because you said that was the coolest vehicle that like. Oh, oh God. Presented in the seventies and was available in the eighties. Eric, can you mute him? Body, square body. That’s all I gotta say. Uh,

Crew Chief Brad: box Chevy Caprice. Is that what he just said? Is that what I heard?

That’s a square body too.

Crew Chief Eric: Holy cow. That’s terrible.

Mike Crutchfield: No, his favorite car. The Ford Tar Wagon that made it into the

Crew Chief Eric: nineties, right? Mercury Sable wagon. But the thing is, I think the 9 64 was short-lived, right? 88 to 92. It was only around for four years and it’s underappreciated. But the thing that was badass about the 9 64 is all the variants that it came in in four years.

The RS America, the CTR, two Yellowbird recreation that they did, the 9 64 turbo. I mean, there’s a bunch of crazy, like it’s like the last hoorah of the old school, nine [01:02:00] 11 and to your point, a car that was built in the sixties that they dragged all the way through the nineties, and they finally got it right before they basically started over again with the 9 9 3.

Now, don’t get me wrong, the 9 9 3. Gorgeous car, especially some of those colors they had like that merlott and that ice blue and there’s some really neat stuff. And I got the opportunity to ride in a 95 twin Turbo 9 9 3. And that was unbelievably eye-opening experience. And I, I, it, it still has left an impression on me to this day.

Those cars are amazing. So those are on my vote. If you’re gonna go with Porsches, all the ones I listed, there’s some really cool stuff there in that really short window of time in the early nineties.

Mark Shank: It’s too bad the 9 6 4 turbos have gotten up, uh, so much in price. Those, those are really cool. Those are really cool cars.

They, they made a bunch of different cool, cool fun cars. Yeah, obviously I’d, if I, if I had a lot more money, I’d have a 9, 9 3 turbo. Of course car would be badass.

Crew Chief Eric: Now I think there’s another car we’ve forgotten about. You could buy it on a budget. You’d have a lot of money left over.

Mark Shank: What, what, what is this?

S

Crew Chief Eric: [01:03:00] Miata. Well, there’s always, well see you now. You’re ruining it. The answer’s always Miata, but VR six Rado.

Mark Shank: Oh, we’re gonna do Rados. I loved Rados as a kid. I remember my dad and I, we’d go to this dealership and we’d looked at this, I remember at the time thinking like, this car is $27,000. Are they out of their mind?

Crew Chief Eric: It was expensive. Yeah.

Mark Shank: And that’s why we could see that one same car every week for a year, because they never saw if it was the

Crew Chief Eric: one in dc if it was the red one in DC it’s the one my dad ended up buying, by the way. Just like you know, it was

Mark Shank: one in Frederick. It was, it was in a f Fred. It was in the Frederick Volkswagen dealer.

It sat there forever. But God, that car was cool. And I loved the idea of the, the supercharged four cylinder before the, before they put the VR six in it and um, G sixties, which I prefer the G six over to VR six,

Crew Chief Eric: last femur. Blasphemer. Well, well, I, I almost, I almost bought

Mark Shank: a co, I almost bought, instead of that Z 28, instead of that 94 Z 28, I almost bought a rado, supercharged, uh, [01:04:00] force cylinder.

Matt Yip: The big downside Rados had was they were heavy compared to anything Volkswagen made. The supercharged was slower than the Rocco that it replaced, which was a tough sell, and the V six, which was obviously faster. Suffered from the fact that it had this giant lump at the front. I mean, they were, they were neat looking cars.

The problem with them was they just like every Volkswagen,

Mark Shank: they drive the wrong wheels and the weight distribution sucks.

Crew Chief Eric: Now, I will say this, the VR six is one of those underappreciated engines though. And if you follow the VR Society guys on Instagram, they will swap a VR into anything. But it’s amazing the amount of power they can get out of that 12 valve.

I mean, 900 horsepower is not a stretch of the imagination to do out of that tiny little engine, which is absolutely amazing. But staying with that idea, also a car from the nineties, also from Volkswagen, also available with the VR six, the Eurovan. Think about Hot Roding. A Eurovan. That’d be pretty slick, man.

Sounds nasty. Big turbo. You’re still gonna light up the [01:05:00] front end, but it’s in a van.

Mark Shank: If I’m gonna hot Rod a minivan, I’ll do it right and I will. Hot Rod a Honda Odyssey, like Rutledge Wood did. People actually did that like, like when the, the whole Fast and the Furious thing. It was, it was like when. It was like a second version of when like, uh, Dr.

Dre got to the suburbs, right? And, and it was, and so all of a sudden you have all these kids thinking about like the crap they’re gonna do. Like people were legit putting nitrous kits in Odysseys. Like, it sounds like a joke, but they did it.

Mike Crutchfield: But what van could you buy with a manual transmission?

Mark Shank: None. None.

That’s

Mike Crutchfield: fine. A Dodge Caravan.

Mountain Man Dan: The Chevy Astro also I think offered a manual for a couple years.

Mike Crutchfield: I know, I know someone who had a Dodge Caravan stick shift when? When I was in high school. Did the

Crew Chief Eric: Eurovan come with a manual too? This Eurovan I just

Crew Chief Brad: put in the chat is a manual. There you go. Boom. This one’s a camper too.

Crew Chief Eric: What’s a West Flia? West Flia. So Mike being a BMW guy, BMW fan, I think there’s one we’ve forgotten.

Mark Shank: Z one. I [01:06:00] can’t afford an original Z eight, but a Z one with the door thing that drops down. It could be hot. The Z eights

Crew Chief Eric: are slick. Those are, those are hot. Those,

Mark Shank: these are so hot. I love the z eights back in the day.

Crew Chief Eric: It is a Z car. Come on. Come on, Mikey. Oh, the clown shoe. That one?

Mark Shank: Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: the clown shoe started in

Mark Shank: 98. Z 3M or whatever the, the penis mobile. It was like an upside down cocking balls.

Crew Chief Eric: So those are, those are, you could hoon around in those cars. They’re light, they’re agile. Decent power for as for as big as they are with the 3.2 liter especially, I drove a, A 98 that was that a gentleman I know special ordered and all this kind of thing.

It was a cool car I had visibility wise, I thought it was a little awkward, but it all depends on your height more than anything. But everybody kind of raves about the clown shoe. You gotta get over the aesthetics of it. But it is definitely a hoon car and. In typical BMW fashion, throw a dine kit on it or something else like that and make gobs of horsepower.

Mark Shank: Yeah, absolutely. I, I almost bought a Z four M when I got my E [01:07:00] 46, M three. I was kind of going between the two, but the original Z 3M would, would be a ton of fun. That would be pretty, I, I kind of imagine they’re, they’re

Matt Yip: ugly. You either love them or hate ’em.

Mark Shank: I think I’d love one,

Matt Yip: I think

Mark Shank: I’d love one

Matt Yip: and that, and that’s another car you really have to respect because it’s got a boatload of power and no wheel base to speak of.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Matt Yip: You know, and, and that’s fun.

Crew Chief Eric: So do we have any other suggestions for Mark?

Crew Chief Brad: I think we should go around the, the horn and give our best Hail Mary.

Crew Chief Eric: I think so too. Well, I wanna, I wanna highlight a few things and Mark, you can correct me if I’m wrong, some of the things you went ooh, ah, about as we were talking about this.

I think 9 28 was on that list. I think the Audi S eight was on that list.

Mark Shank: 500 or five Audi E 500 for sure.

Crew Chief Eric: And maybe the BMW eight series. Right. So those are like the top five kind of out of the list of 30 that we posted out there. But I think, I think Brad’s right, we, we don’t have

Mark Shank: an American one in there.

I like the WS six. I think that’s a fun idea. I could do that.

Crew Chief Eric: Let’s shotgun it. Let’s start, Matt, what would you recommend a hundred grand to spend [01:08:00] one car from the nineties go? Probably the 500 E

Mountain Man Dan: Mount. Well, I was gonna say we didn’t, uh, for American cars earlier, I don’t think we mentioned it, but the Ford SHO was a bit of a sleeper back in its time.

So. Get the fuck outta here with

Mark Shank: the Yamaha motor. Get the fuck outta here.

Crew Chief Eric: Wise guy. What is this Taurus stuff?

Mark Shank: So before it went Ular, the older boxier, the Robocop

Crew Chief Eric: one,

Mark Shank: the Robocop with the Yamaha V six. That’s not a bad, that’s not a bad suggestion.

Crew Chief Eric: Ford probe. So Mountain man Dad, that you, you’re a Blasphemer dude.

You cannot recommend a Ford as a bow tie man. So what’s your shotgun for Mark? No, no, no. I

Mountain Man Dan: wasn’t recommending it because I’m not a fan of SOI was just mentioning it. As I mentioned,

Crew Chief Eric: Uhhuh,

Mountain Man Dan: definitely, like I said earlier, I’m a hundred percent on board with the WS six option. ’cause there’s. A ton of aftermarket stuff you can do.

And those LS engines will take tons of power. But if you’re gonna go with European best bang for your buck would be go online and try to find something and [01:09:00] ship it. ’cause I think you would get it here stateside and have a lot more money to be able to invest in it than if you were to buy one already.

Crew Chief Brad: Stateside. This is the slowest speed round I think we’ve ever done.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, because everybody’s got 10 other, you know, things they want to add in there. Race, Iran, what are you thinking? Shotgun citation X 11. No,

Ron Shurie: that’s too word. Oh god, I’m, I’m thinking the Esplanade all the way.

Crew Chief Eric: The ante, thees.

Ron Shurie: Esper. Classy car.

Beautiful. Makes a lot of power holds. People got modern, uh, conveniences and still hauls ass and you can make a ton of power with that. Five liter or bigger.

Crew Chief Brad: I have three. The Ferrari F 3 55, the Shelby Series. One or one that would actually be attainable for me. The 3000 GT

Mark Shank: Shelby series one. Do we know how much those cost?

Crew Chief Brad: They’re, they’re in the stratosphere. They’re expensive.

Mark Shank: Oh yeah. Nope. Out of budget.

Crew Chief Eric: I like some of the suggestions that have been put out. I mean, I am, I was surprised by the WS six because I forgot about it, and I do really like that car. I think that’s a lot of fun. I think you could have a lot of fun with that.

But for the amount of money you would [01:10:00] spend in a WS six, you would park it in your garage next to your GT three and go, oh God, I own a pond. I’d

Mark Shank: park it on top of my GT three.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, right.

Crew Chief Brad: You’ll never drive that. WS six and the interior is complete garbage. It’s like sitting in your Cavalier from the eighties all over again.

Crew Chief Eric: Point in case, right? So that you would be

Crew Chief Brad: miserable.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s why I say if you’re, if you’re really thinking about going down that route and you don’t want something exotic like the Penos or you know, all these other cars we talked about, I honestly believe my heart of heart Viper is the answer because it’s already done.

It sounds amazing. It looks amazing. It, it’s not even moving. And it looks fast. It is fast. It’s a cool car. It’s it’s quintessential nineties. They got it right. Especially with the GTS coop. I don’t think you can go wrong and you’re probably gonna end up. You know, picking one up, let’s say in the market of 70 to 80, you know, pristine condition, low mileage without having to do a whole heck of a lot.

And you’ll have money left over in your pocket. You know, you build some of these other cars [01:11:00] and you’re still left with whatever the base car was. Now the exception to the Viper rule, like I said, is if you go back to the Porsches from the early nineties or mid nineties, there’s some really cool stuff there, especially if you could find a low mileage 9, 9 3 or even a 9 64 or something like that.

But you already have a nine 11 and you want something different. So I still think my vote lies with the Dodge.

Mark Shank: Alright. Alright.

Crew Chief Eric: And secretly I wanna drive it after you get it. So just letting you know

Crew Chief Brad: and, and I’m gonna change, I’m gonna drop the series one because they are unobtainium and I’m gonna replace it with the B five S four.

Mark Shank: I like that. I like that. I think I’d go S eight if I was gonna do Audi though. I agree with you on that one.

Crew Chief Brad: Been there, done that.

Mark Shank: I’m gonna throw this out there. I know you, this is for me. Just so we’re clear. This is for me.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, you’re not buying me a car. Well, why are we doing this

Mark Shank: shit?

Crew Chief Eric: It’s what waste should I buy?

What should last

Mountain Man Dan: 90 minutes? Eric was uh, talking some trash on your Ws just now. But here’s the thing though. [01:12:00] Pontiac is no longer a brand. That means it’s only gonna increase in value. Bullshit. It’s gonna stay at

Crew Chief Brad: 15 grand for its eternity.

Mark Shank: No, I, so I think, no, actually I do think you’re right. I, I think probably a good condition one would go up.

The, the problem is, is like, I’m, like I said, I do want to get into modification and, and personalization of it, and I, I think that will kind of. Will hurt Its resale

Crew Chief Eric: of, of a viper or are you talking about the problem? Oh,

Mark Shank: the, the w the like, you know, of the W six or whatever of a viper. I mean, everybody knows that’s a death trap.

I think if, honestly, if I were gonna get a viper, I don’t think I’d get one from the nineties. Like I think it would scratch that nineties itch, but I would get a later one and you know, then one of the ones that makes 640 horsepower or whatever, and it’s, you’re getting that outta the box and it only costs 20 grand more than the one from the nineties anyway.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, I’ve ridden on track in an A CR and it’s unbelievable. One of my favorite cars ever. I mean, you can keep everything else as, as far as I’m concerned. So just like every, what should I [01:13:00] buy? Episode, we never really do come to a logical conclusion. Lots of really great suggestions and I’m gonna put air quotes around.

Great. And it was really fun to have everybody on the show. So Mark, hopefully we gave you some food for thought, you know, maybe some things you weren’t thinking about, some other things to consider, some sleepers and and whatnot. So we wish you luck on your journey. We wanna follow back up with you and see what you end up buying.

You know, thanks for coming on. This has been a lot of fun.

Mark Shank: Awesome. You know, I really appreciate it. You guys have given me a lot to think about. I, I think it’s important for me, like I try not to get married to any one idea. And so I try to find that mix of like the car that’s in the right condition and, and kind of checks those boxes.

And, and so it’s like, I, I, it’s not like I’m gonna come out of this and just pick one car and then I’m gonna go and try and hunt and find that it’s more of like, it’s kind of broadened my horizons from a search perspective. I will find a car that feels right and I’ll pick it up, and you guys have given me a lot of good ideas and, and I, and thinking in different directions from cars and even purchase markets to where I want to do that.

So I appreciate it. This has been [01:14:00] great. Very

Crew Chief Eric: cool. Very cool and we wanna thank our panel of, uh, guest g tmr tonight, racer Ron Hazmat mountain man. Dan, obviously, Brad and I are always here and if you’re listening to this episode and you would like to set up your own version of what Should I buy, don’t hesitate to reach out for us.

We’d love to have you on the show and give a, give you all of our bad recommendations. So until next time,

Crew Chief Brad: are we gonna do a follow up in about six months when Mark tells us all about the Miata he bought.

If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about gtm, be sure to check us out on www.gt motorsports.org. You can also find us on Instagram at Grand Tour Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can call or text us at (202) 630-1770 or send us an email at crew chief@gtmotorsports.org.

We’d love to hear from you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey everybody, crew Chief Eric here. We really hope you [01:15:00] enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization, and our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes like this one at no charge. As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our Patreon for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies and GTM swag.

For as little as $2 and 50 cents a month, you can keep our developers, writers, editors, casters, and other volunteers fed on their strict diet of fig Newton’s, gummy bears, and Monster. Consider signing up for Patreon today at www.patreon.com/gt motorsports. And remember, without fans, supporters, and members like you, none of this would be possible.

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

• 00:00:00 Introduction and Panel Setup; Meet Mark Shank: Car Enthusiast
• 00:01:09 Mark’s Car History
• 00:04:27 Criteria for the Perfect 90s Car
• 00:09:20 Panel’s Car Suggestions
• 00:13:14 Exploring American Muscle Options
• 00:17:17 Japanese Car Contenders
• 00:28:05 European Car Possibilities
• 00:38:12 Comparing Car Sizes Over the Years
• 00:38:45 Bentley and Jaguar: British Sleepers
• 00:42:50 Panoz and TVR: American and British Performance
• 00:44:14 Morgan and Shelby: Classic and Rare Cars
• 00:46:48 The Aston Martin DB7 and British Car Philosophy
• 00:50:23 Exploring German Performance Cars
• 00:51:43 American Muscle and Sleeper Cars
• 00:59:01 Porsche and BMW: Iconic 90s Cars
• 01:07:20 Final Recommendations and Wrap-Up

What else should you buy? Check out other What Should I Buy? Podcast episodes for more car buying “advice” 😉 And remember: the debate never ends – it just shifts gears.