In Loving Memory:
My 1992 Nissan Sentra SE-ROnly had about 65,000 miles on her too. Bought her with 48,000 miles on the clock about a year and a half beforehand. Just finished driving her across the country to New England and back for a sabbatical and expected to have many happy years together, when in October 1999 while merely a block from my apartment I was rear-ended by an uninsured ancient Accord while stopped in a traffic jam. Saw it coming but there was nowhere I could go. The impact pushed me into the Lexus ahead of me. The Accord drove away after we pulled over, but the cops caught her about a mile away. Good thing I didn't let my insurance agent talk me into dropping my uninsured motorists coverage!
Amazingly, all the lights still worked and it ran great ... straight and true! The driver's seat was twisted from me bouncing around in it, and I bruised some ribs, but I was otherwise unharmed. Drove it for a week or two while the insurance company took their time processing my claim. A recent Carfax report shows it with a salvage title somewhere.
In happier days.
My New Ride:
1990 Honda CRX DX
Couldn't find another SE-R Classic in time, and I was just starting my freelance career with no regular income, so I took my insurance check around the car lots to see what I could come up with. Found this CRX with 78,000 miles in good shape (except for hail damage to the body and windshield ... it's got kind of a golfball effect, which helps my speed, I'd like to think) at a Subaru dealer.
Other interesting finds at the time (1999) were a Mazda MX-3 V6 with 50,000 miles for $8,000 (what a little screamer), a first generation Infinity G20 with 25,000 miles from CarMax for around $12,000 (basically the same as my SE-R but for twice the price ... even shared the same dashboard!) and a 1995 Ford Contour 5-speed with 50,000 miles for $7,000 (a really impressive car that feels similar to an SE-R Classic with a great stubby shifter, but reliability sucks), but those required dipping into my savings and future food and rent money.
Here she is when I first bought it ... the TealMobile as I call her.
Those skinny steel wheels had to go!
The famous Enkei $39 "PimpWheels" (hey, a sale at Tire Rack is a sale!) were added soon after the purchase, which much improved things. Other mods would include a Neuspeed front strut tower bar (highly recommended ... really tightened things up), Suspension Techniques front and rear antisway bars, K&N drop-in filter and Grant steering wheel with 2" extension (even Car & Driver complains about the arms-out gorilla driving position in their review). The 15" Borbets replaced the 14" PimpWheels after I wore the tread down.
Added after the top photo were Eibach Pro Kit springs with KYB AGX struts, which completed the handling upgrades. (Tokico Blues had to go after two months of harsh, brainsloshing riding.)
My Miata Days:
1996 to 1998
My first performance car ... a 1994 Mazda Miata with 30,000 miles that I bought for $11,000 on December 1996 (buy convertibles when it's 20 degrees out and you'll get a good deal). At 6'2" with size 13 feet, it's a tight fit, but I had to get it out of my system. A fun car with go-cart steering and a British attitude, but I got tired of squeezing into it after a while. That's when I found my SE-R ... which outperformed the Miata in every category!
See, I even had a fleet of imports while I tried selling the Miata
(it took three months to unload that thing!).