Well my daily driver's transmission went out. Its a 2001 Cougar Zn with 208,000 miles. (For Sale!!) It has a cracked windshield, leaks a small amount of oil somewhere under the hood, and like I said the tranny is shot. BUT. I put new tires on it less than a year ago and it has new struts.

It's going to take around 2K to replace the tranny with a rebuilt one so I'm leaning towards scrapping it out and calling it a day on that car.

I was planning on buying a used corvette in the $25K range in a couple of years but now I may have to get something sooner. But right now my price range is closer to 10K.

My only requirements for a new car are that it must be a daily driver (3 days a week), it must be a "fun" car (fast), and I'd like to get 20mpg or so minimum.

Right now I'm kind of leaning towards a Mustang GT, or possibly a 80's Buick T-type.

I also could fix the cougar I guess and wait a couple of years for a vette.

Any ideas?

 

well a 99-04 mustang is about your new budget, the 4.6 will pretty readily get 20mpg (my moms gets 24 avg) and is still a 2dr car.

I drive an 06 Merc Milan v6 (fusion) as a DD, summer 26mpg, winter 23. Its a grandma's car but man its pretty nice on the inside, and gets out of its own way quick. Love the car for when I take my parents or more than 1 other person.

 

I know one I thing I definitely would not do and that's stick $2000.00 into a ten-year-old Cougar with over 200k miles on the odometer......

 

Yea 1500 I could almost stomach but 2k is too much.

 

I don't know if that is the v6 or not but if it is just sell the damn thing. I have R&Red a trans on one of those and it is a nightmare. I will never do another one in my life. Save yourself some blood, skin on your knuckles, and grey hair. Sell the car as is.

 

I have on 01 gt auto, and the only time it gets over 20 is doing a full tank long distance. For me 17 is normal, but that's hot footing it all the time. I think it would depend on driving style, but since he's looking for a "fun" / fast car, I'm assuming he'd be hot footing it too.

80's GM stuff I'd be very scared about from a reliability perspective, maybe not the turbo drive train, have no experience, but all the b.s. internal trim parts were extremely cheap. The door pulls, radio mounting system, window crank handles, tilt steering columns that work loose and especially headliners all suck.

 

Yes the interior can fall apart but that should all be easy to fix. I can do pretty much all interior work myself.

I've always liked that style car and from what I've heard, the T-type is one bad a** machine! I've never driven one or even ridden in one but I guess they are basically the same as the Grand Nationals but they don't have the paint and emblem scheme that makes them GNs.

 

I won't be doing this work myself. I'd have a trained mechanic do it.

But I doubt I'm going to go down that route.

Sell as is or part out is likely the path I'll take.

 

Part out the car. Low mile used tires sell good on craigslist. Hell pull off the shocks and sell them too. I would sell everything I could off of it and then pull the cats, radiator, starter, and alternator and scrap the rest. You get more money for the above items cashed in separate at the scrap yard.

 

Yea that's probably what I'll do. I may even find someone who wants all of or some of the interior. The Zn model is a fairly low production model. There is another forum like this one for these cougars.

I figure I can only get about $500 for it complete as is

 

wow 208,000 miles. My mom has a 99 with 5,800 miles

 

Just in case anyone is interested in it.

for sale link click here.

 

I'd recommend a Cavalier, preferably with over 275K miles.

 

A 91 Z24 would be pretty sweet!

actually those cars were pretty fun to drive. the early 90's Z24s with the manual transmission that is.

 

You could not do better than a ford 500 awd the car is amazing....