Snowmants

Base C6 Corvette or a C5 Z06 Corvette. <----Talk about bang for your buck....

white98ls

Does the 350/370Z really hold value well? I also thought, at least on the 350 with the optional Brembo brakes, that the brakes were somehow crazy expensive to replace. E46 also a lot more maintenance-intensive (both in work and cost) than an S2k.

The troubling thing is the only car that's truly as cheap/reliable as the S2k is the Miata, and that's obviously very similar but a lot slower stock. And all of the other cars, which are as quick or quicker than the S2k, are ~500lbs heavier.

white98ls

That's what I'm thinking. C5 Z06 is pretty reliable, way more performance than an S2k, but won't depreciate much at all, and parts are pretty cheap. It's even fairly practical and economical!

JonBoy

944/968 is relatively simple but the timing belt requirements are expensive and regular (every 30K miles, practically speaking). They're all old now so everything is going wrong on them - tons of plastic and rubber parts to replace. The engine bay is a nightmare. I would say they're nowhere near what an S2000 is for reliability or maintenance.

Miata, FR-S/BR-Z, 350Z/370Z and Mustangs/Camaros are probably your best bet. None of them really hold value well - they're still in production so there's no reason for them to retain value since they aren't production limited (compared to demand by the market).

A C5 Z06 is probably going to hold value best.

JamesD89

C5 Corvette might have the S2K beat. Insurance is most likely cheaper and you'll get better mileage

bruthaboost

To completely replace the bembos, it'll be around 1000 for a used caliper set and new everything else; however, I don't see any reasonable scenario where someone would need to do that. Rebuild kits are cheap. The Z models will not hold their value, but they are cheap RWD fun.

TheDonEffect

C5Z. Best value and probably the best performer within this metric. The Japanese awd turbo cars would be too but can you really trust them at an affordable price?

WolfpackS2k

350Zs are not holding their value. They can be had cheap, and for good reason.

CosmosMpower

Not much more room to go down past 10k.

white98ls

Is that really true about insurance? I don't know if it's still true, but years back Corvettes had the highest fatality rate of all cars, and I wonder what the repair costs are for fiberglass vs. steel.