alright then...

Forget about getting an eclipse, get an srt4 like all the other 16 y/o's, and call it a day.

ohhhh thats right srt4's blow up. Well get an RX-7 those are nice. Oh yeah, rotaries grenade. Volkswagens are good cars...until the warranty expires. Everybody and their grandma's grandma has a honda. How about a supra? Nice cars right there. But we gotta get a car where you are not spending every dime you have.

Point is, many cars you buy for 5k or lower are going to have problems, stock or not, even some cars OVER 10k will have issues. As regards to looking at gauges, when did that become a bad thing? I look at my gauges on my RELIABLE-ASS eclipse all the time, thats just monitoring. They wouldn't be there if you were not supposed to look at them. I didn't make much money at all when I had my talon and then when i had my eclipse, but I sure as hell didnt spend every last dime on the car. I had a savings account that was growing because I didnt need to spend all that money on it. More than 75% of the money spent on the car was upgrades. If yuo are saying that he will get sucked into a car he is never satisfied with as far as performance, driveability, etc., then you are correct. But the only valid point made was that you wanna be able to take your girl out without the car breaking down. Thats everybodies worst fear lol.

I'm not missing any point, you sir are missing the point by implying that DSM's are piece of shit cars that WILL break down. I've given you valid examples and I can go on all day about DSM's that havn't had any unusual problems. When you see 1g's on the side of the road on your merry way to lakeland, could that possibly have something to do with the car being up to 15 years old?

Because of your VASTLY superior dsm meKaNiK skills I don't mean any offense or disrespect at all, but I think you should consider that a nice 1g or 2g that he doesnt beat on will last and be a very nice car. For $5.5k, he could find something for $2500 or so, take the car to your precious Brotherz shop, have them check it out, and then spend a 1000 or so to do a tune up or fix any little problems. The point of this all is that any car ragged on will break down, any car driven carefully and maintained well will last longer. And I apologize for long threads.