Good cheap muscle car

I was hunting for a cheap muscle car like a mustang or something for a school car. Pretty cheap like in the 3k range that can handle icy roads and such and gets good mileage (i commute 40 miles a day).

I was hunting for a cheap muscle car like a mustang or something for a school car. Pretty cheap like in the 3k range that can handle icy roads and such and gets good mileage (i commute 40 miles a day).
Muscle car, cheap, and good gas mileage don't go in the same sentence. If you want a muscle car it'll get bad gas mileage. You could get a fairly cheap muscle car, like a 80-92 camaro, but it won't get good gas mileage.

what kind of mileage will it get?

Late 80s, early 90s Camaro with a 305 V8. Not that fast but a good V8 sound and excellent gas mileage. Not too hard to maintain. Best looking cars on the road right now.

A camaro of that time would get roughly 19 MPG (city), 27 (highway), 22 (average), it's much better than what I was originally thinking, but they really aren't all that fast, but they are really cheap to mod, stock I think they run between high 14s to high 15s (depends on what model you get, I would suggest a z28), but you could get them down to low 14s to high 13s without too much work or money.

EDIT: The numbers are times on 1/4 mile in case you didn't know. 14s are usually what people consider to be a pretty quick car. 13s are very fast in general.

If you want to know how fast a car is stock here's a fairly good list to go on:
http://www.albeedigital.com/supercoupe/articles/0-60times.html

I got this for $2000. ;)

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/kevincal23/detail?.dir=/cf1b&.dnm=b6db.jpg&.src=ph

Fox Body Mustang.....enough said

Luckily my entire commute is on highway.

That 5.0 in the pictures I have has 2.73 gears. Perfect if you're on the highway a lot. I'm only turning like 2500 pms going 90+ mph ;) Plus that car has performance heads intake exhaust injectors etc. Has about 270 rwhp so that makes up for the non-performance gears. I kinda like being able to go almost 50 mph in 1st gear. ;)

Everyone is neglecting the icey roads part. You wont find a muscle car that is good in icey roads. All muscle cars are RWD and therefore suck in the snow and rain and ice. Most muscle cars only get about 8-12 mpg. If you want good gas mileage and comfort, get an import or atleast a more modern car.

As long as you throw on some snow tires and don't mash the gas, you shouldn't have any problems. A fwd import won't do any better on icy roads.... Gas mileage, ok ya. It kinda sucks.

Lets say 13 gallon tanks. Muscle car, 10mpg...just for easy math (but will probably be less). Thats 130 miles to a tank @ 40 miles a day, you'll have to fill up every 3 days. An import that gets 20 mpg thats 260 miles to a tank. That way you're filling up once a week instead of every three days. With old cars you also have to remember there is always gonna be something wrong, especially if you're only spending around 3G. Theres a reason that same muscle car that costs 3G can also go for 20G, its alot about quality. If you only have 3G to spend on a car, you want something that is going to be reliable and efficient. Your buddies may tease you if youre driving some beater kia but when they cant afford to go to the titty bar and blow some cash elsewhere, you'll be the real winner lol. When I was buying my first car, I was debating between a 2001 Kia w/26,000 miles on it for $3200 and a 1989 Nissan Maxima w/122,000 miles on itfor $2300. I was drawn in by the Maximas racing rims and aftermarket spoiler and 6 cyl manual power(I always kind of wanted to drive stick). Now that Maxima has about 125,000 miles on it and it was just towed out of my girlfriends driveway at about 11:00 this morning because it got an unforseen leak and would not go into gear. So...the morale of my story is be practical and get something you can afford and wont have to put more money into. You don't need the extra speed, any car you buy can go 90mph and you should never even be going that fast really to begin with. We all want speed and a cool car but if you only have 3G and you drive 40 miles a day, speed isnt what you need.

Thanks for the help everybody. Sorry that I failed to mention that I plan on buying one of these as a project car that my dad agreed to help me fix with the 3 grand for funding the project. So hopefully most flaws of a car with 100,000+ miles on it will be removed and if not I plan on doing all repairs. But if most cars like the third gen camaro and such dont do well and ice and gas mileage and the other things mentioned what would be a good performance car?

Thanks for the help everybody. Sorry that I failed to mention that I plan on buying one of these as a project car that my dad agreed to help me fix with the 3 grand for funding the project. So hopefully most flaws of a car with 100,000+ miles on it will be removed and if not I plan on doing all repairs. But if most cars like the third gen camaro and such dont do well and ice and gas mileage and the other things mentioned what would be a good performance car?

Well if your main two things that you want are gas mileage and doing well with the ice, then I would suggest a front weel drive car with a 4 cylinder or a 6 cylinder.

I guess a good all around car for you to balance it out would be a car with a v6, probably front weel drive (to handle ice). See the trouble is with the kind of things you want the car cant really be all of it, like if you want it to be fast then its not gonna get very good mpg, and faster cars are usually RWD, but they don't handle as well on ice.

I would still suggest the 3rd gen camaros, they may not be the most reliable, but there as cheap as hell and though they aren't the best on the road for snow, you can throw snow tires on it and it should handle just fine. And for their speediness they do get really good gas mileage.

EDIT: you could do something more mutual like something with a v6 (good amount of power but balanced with pretty good gas mileage), front wheel drive. Like for example I drive a Pontiac Grand Am because I wanted something fairly mutual with gas mileage and power and it handles well because its a front weel drive.

I got a '94 Camaro Z28(LT1 engine) for $2200.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v294/flatlander757/070405_08.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v294/flatlander757/070405_07.jpg

It is VERY fast :iceslolan

It's rated at 17 city and I think 23 or so highway.

But with 275hp, it's worth it :biggrin:

I won't have to worry about snow because my license is suspended until February(don't street race :disappoin ), but many people use them with snow tires with great luck. You can find a decent one for $3k. I got mine for $2200 and it's in great shape. Just gotta look. Also, if you get a 95-97, it will come with traction control that can further aid you in snow driving. Not to mention ABS comes standard on all of them.

LT1 Camaro(93-97) = mid to low 14s at 100mph

most recent fox body mustang(87-93) = mid to low 15s and I THINK 92 or so mph

Not to mention the LT1 has a way nicer interior so could get you some ass :naughty:

The third gen Camaros are pretty hard to find in good shape, but even still unless it has a 350TPI it's not really worth it, those 305s have ZERO balls after 3500rpms and the 350s are still quite bad, but not terrible.

Oh yeah, and my car has 196,000 miles and still ticking :iceslolan Aside from the few regular bugs that every car has, I'd say these LT1s are very reliable.

Edit: but I think a different class of car would suit you better. Something like a Ford Contour SVT... those things are FWD, sporty, and actually run fairly respectable 1/4 mile times, something like 15s.

What do you think about a Dodge Stealth? It has AWD and is pretty high performance.

What do you think about a Dodge Stealth? It has AWD and is pretty high performance.
A stealth would be a good car, but finding one at 3k would be a challange.

EDIT: yeah well I posted that before i did some slight research, you can get one for around 3k pretty easily, so a stealth would be a good car to go with, itd handle the snow like a champ, itd be fast (low 14s if u get a turbocharged one), the gas mileage isn't a total killer but its around 19 mpg, but overall it seems like this would be a very good choice.

In my experience, the maintenance on the stealths/3000gts tend to kill you. Personally I would not suggest it as an alternative to a "cheap muscle car".

Oops, forgot to post more.

An oft forgotten car of the past is the 86/87 (earlier years are impressive too, just not as much) Buick Grand National. They are increasingly hard to find, and the value is known amongst collectors, but you can on occassion find one of these forgotten gems for a steal. The launch on these is quite amazing. The standard 3.8 turbo puts out 240+ BHP and 350+ ft-lb of torque. The super rare (somewhere around 550) GNX put out 276 bhp and 360 + ft-lb torque.

The standard Grand National ran low 14 quarters and the GNX ran mid 13 quarters. I once saw a video of one set up to a dyno pumping out 1000+ hp and allegedly was street legal.

Lol I was thinking about that and I wish I could find one of those. There is actually a woman in a small town here in nebraska that i drive through during the school week that has a grand national. Its actually not half that bad looking but you can tell they havent tried to keep it looking nice.

In my experience, the maintenance on the stealths/3000gts tend to kill you. Personally I would not suggest it as an alternative to a "cheap muscle car".

What kind of problems have you run into when fixing these cars? Me and my dad sorta do car maintenance as a hobby, so some problems wont be discouraging.

Most common thing I have seen on them was master cylinder problems. Also, if I remember correctly the timing belt (think it was a chain, been about 6 years since I owned my 3000GT) was nearly impossible to get to. It just overall was an engine that wasn't friendly to work on.

If I had the money just sitting around for weekend car, I would pick up one of the occassional "Brand new" 87 grand nationals that you can find (like under 100 miles) that go for around $30k.

Why are the 3000gt and stealth so closely related? I noticed even the forums were merged together. Is that because the similarity in engine?

Both of the cars are DSM (Diamond Star Motors).

It was a joint venture by Mitsubish and Chrysler. They did the 3000GT/Stealth and the Eclipse/Talon/Laser together. I believe the Galant in the mid-90s also went there.

3000gts and stealths are nice. Im looking into some vr4s myself right now but like people said, 3k is a very tight budget for one. You might be able to find an early base or sl model for that much but not the TT, awd versions and its not going to quite be the muscle car you want, imo.

The cars I plan to buy are going to be wrecked and most likely from an insurance pool or something. I agree it would be hard to find one for 3k lol.