Celica Forums General Discussion General What are some of the most affordable turbo cars from the factory

to maintain, to buy, and to fix up?

eclipse 98-99 gsx(all wheel drive, but very heavy car) rx-7 94 (but very expensive and hard to upkeep)if you can find one

to maintain...supra...unless you beat on it the 2jz-GTE is a very reliable engine

to buy / fix up... mr 2 / all trac

the eclipses have problems and a lot of them from what I've heard

eclipse 92-94 if you want an all-out racer...in fwd or awd there are some killers...the current fastest import racing on street tires is black 94 eclipse awd.

95-99 eclipse turbo's are fast and relatively easily modded to 500hp...i've seen a bunch...but it's best to use the 6-bolt 1st gen motor (made up to 1994).

GTI 1.8T?

dodge daytona? i've seen one in my lifetime that was done well.

300zx's you can find pretty cheap if you go for an earlier model...

wrx's aren't bad and a couple grand into it and it will beat an STI

MR2!

I think the srt4 is one of the best turbo bang for your buck cars you can get. They can easily hold up to 400hp on the stock internals and tranny.

What's "cheap"? Under 30K? That sounds reasonable to me. Under there, that would include the Neon SRt-4, WRX, VW's 1.8T, Audi A4 1.8T and pushing the budget would be your EVO/STI. I'm not so sure about cars older than those, they get beat up pretty badly.

I had a DSM before, an AWD Turbo Talon. That car was rock solid. So your best bet is to find a 97&up Mitsubishi Eclipse (best looks). They have very little problems and pretty reliable. Plus you can make it go like stink.

i almost bought a 98 gsx with 60k on it but i didnt since too many people have done those already it takes more taste to work on a celica and they are rare

look into the VW , merkur, alltrac celicas are still selling for 10gs, first gen eclipses, 4th gen all trac (high mileage) mr2 rare and hard to work on due to space , old school audi quattros.

just a matter of how cheap you want to go.

mr2 turbo 91-95 !!! use to have one till i wrecked it It's a great car to own.

well for 30 grand you could get a used wrx sti

Everybody that posted something about a DSM is pretty much wrong I would aggree go with a 1st gen DSm 90-92.5 if you were to get one. 90-92.5 have the strongest motor wich people will refer to it as a 6 bolt motor, anything above those years have 7 bolt motors unless it was swapped out. 95+ DSM have a a major engine problem called crank walk wich destroyes the engine on almost 50% of the cars that came out of the factory caused by a bad batch of bearings and improper machining of the crank. And as for the weight of the car they weigh around 3100-3200LBS with the AWD trim wich is not bad since you get AWD and these cars can be moded upto 500HP without internal engine build up, and easily see 800-1000HP with some work done to the internals. These cars are not cheap whatso ever to maintain but make up for it more then enough in performance. So since you posted you wanted a affordable car to maintain DO NOT get this car.

^^^TRUE