As I was browsing the daily Bring a Trailer newsletter yesterday, I noticed a 2001 Acura Integra Type R got sold for a relatively measly $16,000. My first thought was the car must’ve got some miles on it, because clean samples of the legendary Type R machine have ranged from the $30,000s all the way to $70,000s for the absolute best example. Interested, I clicked on the auction, and turns out that particular car has over 200,000 miles on it. That means someone has put that many miles on an Integra Type R, a car more famous for its tendency to get stolen than its fabulous FWD handling prowess.
What an inspiration, and it does bring a smile to my face.
I’ve always advocated for putting miles on our fun cars: they are effectively useless being sat in garages. It’s sad that some people see sports cars as investments, that the best way to preserve a car’s value is to store it and keep it shiny. Therefore I take some schadenfreude glee in seeing the recent trend of Porsche GT cars dipping in value: lots of super low miles, practically brand-nw GT3 and GT2s are being sold on Bring a Trailer for $15,000 to $20,000 in depreciation, instead of the well above MSRP levels they were trading just one year ago.
You thought you were going to make some money on that Cayman GT4, didn’t you Squidward?
Porsche really cratered the secondary market by upping production of GT cars tremendously in recent years, because the brilliant engineers at Weissach want these cars to be driven and used, rather than treated as gold bars to be traded for gains. I have to give the same kudos to McLaren: the company seems bent on making great cars, with zero regard for the resale value of its pass models. Let’s leave the wiping with baby diapers and haggling over the value of options to Ferrari owners. The rest of us will keep on driving.
My own 991 GT3 is about to cross the 30,000 mile mark soon, and I only hope I’ll get to take it through 100,000 miles and beyond.
There might truly be a (coronavirus) emergency soon.