Just four years ago, you could pick up a good Honda Integra Type R DC2 for around £4500.
Then, your money bought a 1997 R-reg car with 100,000 miles and three previous owners. In standard, rust-free condition, with a full Honda service history including the vital cambelt change at 60,000 miles, and a thorough undersealing in 2011, it’d have made a great buy for someone.
Spring forward to today and, assuming the service history has been kept up, the temptation to modify it has been resisted, rust has been kept at bay and it has put on only around 10,000 miles, the same car could be worth about £8500. Not a bad return but to be expected when a car is this good and this sought after.
The Integra Type R arrived in UK showrooms in 1997. Actually, most were forward sold on the back of glowing reviews in Japan, where it had been on sale since 1995, so few ever saw the polished glass and potted palms. Those first owners raved about the handling of the front-wheel-drive car, an experience that turned the old front-versus rear-drive debate on its head.
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Geekier types purred about its additional spot welds and thicker sheet metal, thicker anti-roll bars, aluminium strut braces, slimmer and lighter windscreen, lightened wheels and minimal sound deadening, all of it true to Honda’s Type R ethos.
Images of white-coated Honda engineers painstakingly assembling the car’s variable-cam 1.8-litre engine, with its polished ports, featherlight conrods, beefier pistons, bespoke inlet valves and enlarged throttle body, swirled around their heads. If anyone doubted their sanity, 187bhp at 8000rpm, equivalent to 104bhp per litre, shut them up.
Because it’s a VTEC engine, it all happens north of 6500rpm, so choose your gear (there are five), give the accelerator a hefty prod and let the fun begin, confident that, thanks to a torque-sensitive helical limited-slip differential, the steering wheel won’t snap your wrists.
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£3,300 for a car with "bad
£3,300 for a car with "bad rust bubbling on the sills and arches". Guys that rust will only get worse unless you've a spare garage to keep it in over winter, but then it is not a usuable classic.
Whatever the price goes up by you would have spend on repairs, MOT, Insurance, getting unobtainable parts made up etc.
With cheap, usuable, fun classics at best you don't break down and end up getting MOST of your money back after 3 years.
xxxx wrote:
"Guys that rust..."...oh dear, poor them. Do you actually mean, "Guys, that rust...?.
Many useable classics are run in the spring/summer weather...what do you know of running a real car, when all you steer is a decrepit sofa?. Get up, get a job and make a contribution, for once in your life. TwIT, the w is silent, as you should be.
Alternatively...
Great car though the Integra Type-R was, the fact is that the youngest examples are 18 years old and command prices around £10k. So why not buy a Toyota GT86 instead? You'd end up with a car of similar size, weight, power and torque, but much newer, with rwd, an extra gear and more practicality to boot.
Not alternatively ...
As for practicality, the Integra is a hatchback that can carry a fridge if needed. The 86 isn't.