Import Luva has a reason to laugh. Turbo'd and reliable don't go together. ESPECIALLY a car that wasn't engineered with turbos in mind (like the S).

Seen a guy blow a hole through his engine within a week.
Then met another who claimed his build was reliable, yet had to check under his hood at each stop because of a "small" oil leak.



Mileage doesn't matter as much as care. Do yourself a favor if you really want the S and still want to "tinker" - keep both, turbo or V8 the miata, leave the S stock. That way, when something DOES go wrong, its 1) cheaper and 2) you still have your daily.

 

150k is high mileage, especially on a car that is a fun/weekend car for a lot of people. That said, a well maintained example can be a reliable daily driver for years to come. Forget about a turbo unless you love to tinker, have reserve funds for repairs, and preferably a 2nd car.

I'd say a 02/03 with around 100k miles might be the sweet spot for you. Might have to up the budget a little for a clean one though.

 

Hate to see a low mileage S2000 being turbo'd as well.

Seems like a well cared for 2004-05 with 50-60,000 miles might be better for such a project.

 

Cars on average are "supposed" to be driven 10k-15k miles a year.
Just multiply that by how many years the car has been out. Anything in between it was most definitely a daily driver. Anything less then it wasn't.

Either way maintenance is the most important on any car.

 

10k mi/yr for a daily driver, but with S2000s, so many are garage queens that you shouldn't have too much trouble finding one with 5k mi/yr, especially a grey one .

 

You don't need to get a low mileage car for it to be a dependable daily driver. You will find the S is almost bulletproof and people that are "working" on their car are just putting upgrades and mods. I've dailied 2 S2000s. The first one is no longer with us because I was hit in the back and totalled out. Between both Ss regular oil and fluid changes, brakes, AC compressor, tires, and softtop is all I've ever done in about 100,000 miles between the two cars in 7 years.
Oh and about 3000 hand car washes

 

If your question is how many miles are considered higher miles than normal, this has been answered in posts above.

If your question is how many miles are considered too high to be reliable dd that doesn't require a lot of maintenance, that is a very different answer.

Of course, like any other car it depends on how well it was taken care of. But there are some cars out there, German cars for example, that even if well taken care of, miles = required maintenance, very expensive required maintenance. The S is not like that. If its properly cared for, and didn't suffer any low oil incidents, no reason it can't be very reliable, and still perform very well, well past 200k miles.

My thoughts, buying a low miles S, to use as a dd, is a bit of a waste. More miles means lower price. Yet more miles probably means easy highway miles.

These cars are either used as weekend warriors, or nice days dd. Rarely are they used as an only car, driven in all sorts of weather (yes, some do. But its rare).

So if its in really nice shape, even appearance wise, but the miles are kinda high, it probably just means it did a lot of dd commuting miles.

If you are on a limited budget, I'd actually look for higher mileage cars, that are in really good shape...

Sent from my SM-G920P using IB AutoGroup

 

To me, to claim any car is "low mileage" means it can't have over 100k. I don't care what year the car is. You can call in "low for the year" but not low.

 

In your original post you said you were looking for a more comfortable car. While all of us love our S2000s, I doubt any of us would say it's any more comfortable than a Miata.