Quote:
Originally Posted by N Camarolina
Maybe I'm too practical a person to a fault, but I have to challenge this idea of "special" as a decision factor, if just for the sake of promoting some debate here.
If you are contemplating buying a car, and you have some options (like the OP does here), you have a list of pros and cons for each car (as have been brought up). But how does "special" become one of the defining pros, and what does "special" really mean?
[B]"They didn't make many of that particular model configuration"/B] So what? Unless you are a collector, shouldn't you be buying it based instead on the attributes that actually impact your day to day experience of driving the car (Performance, comfort, maybe looks, etc). You only get to drive this one car. Why should you care how many more of them are out there? By that measure, what if you are one of the first to buy a "standard model" car and it turns out the car has all kinds of problems and very few are ever sold before it's discontinued. Are you now the owner of a "special" car?
That one is a good bit better than than the usual version of that model car So what? The "special one" in this case still has a list of absolute pros and cons that you'll use to compare it to other vehicles. The fact that it's better than some lesser version of the same car is irrelevant at that point. If the standard Mustang is a dog and the "special" version is a dog with lipstick, or even a greyhound, does that mean it will compare more favorably to a tiger or a cheetah?
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No one can objectively ever challenge what you are saying. For a lot of us when we say a car feels “special” we don’t 100% only mean it because it’s a limited production car. We are talking about it’s presence when we see one on the street. The way it feels when we drive it. I have turned the ignition on on a boss 302. Hearing it roar to life was a “special” event. You don’t hear them very often thus it feels very special to me. It also is a very nice driving vehicle. The roadrunner engine sounds different versus a coyote. Just an FYI I am someone who cross shopped a boss 302 versus a 16-18 SS. Obviously you can tell I went with the SS. Objectively it is better in every performance metric. However I do sometimes wish I had picked up the boss because of the feeling I get the 1 or 2 times I see them in the wild. I know my car is better but I respect the boss for what it was when it came out and for the fact that it’s still a pretty capable car. Not to mention it still feels like a muscle car which I do miss because 6th gens (aside from the push rod power) feel like sports cars (which is mostly a good thing) not muscle cars.
I’ll give you another example of a special car. The e46 and e92 m3’s have absolutely shot up in value. Objectively they are garbage compared to today’s performance. But right now a sub 60k mile e92 m3 is around 40 grand. Feature wise and performance wise it is way below any 6th gen SS but costs more than 16-18’s. People like the way they feel when they drive. It’s not necessarily that they are rare because they really aren’t.