Someone on Bring a Trailer just paid a hair over $200,000 for an Acura Integra Type R with 4,800 miles. Plus buyer’s premium to BaT, and the relevant taxes and registration. Though surely someone with this much coin to drop on essentially a toy would no doubt have a Montana LLC to register it under. No taxes, baby!
Needless to say, that is a metric ton of money for that car. Even the most shortest of wheel-base early model Porsche 911s do not transact for this much. Caveats, of course: this looks to be the most pristine sample of the Integra Type R outside of the one tucked away in the Honda museum. The high price is also due to a bidding war between two rich guys desperate to own this legendary piece of Japanese automotive history.
Bottom line, an item is worth whatever someone is willing to pay. The only way to measure whether or not $200K for an Integra Type R is “worth it” is to have another auction with an almost exact copy of this car. Except you can’t. Honda did not make that many Integra Type Rs to begin with. I bet there isn’t another one of these with this immaculate of provenance.
So we will never know. Us peasants can only dream of dropping $200,000 on a static toy like it’s nothing. You can cut three zeros to that figure and I’d still agonize over whether or not $200 for a pair shoes is worth it. Heck, I’m still teeter-tottering on spending $40,000+ on a second car. $200,000 on something with only artistic value! The new owner won’t ever put miles on this Type R: each additional mile is a hatchet to the car’s value.
(Tongue firmly in cheek) I can understand why a subset of folks want to “eat the rich.” When you see such figures spent on cars like it’s nothing, or paying $100,000 markup on a 992 GT3 that already starts at $250,000, you realize there’s a whole entire separate world of car enthusiasm that you have no access to. Let envy get the best of you, and yeah, you’d want to “eat the rich”, too.
Duck season.