I've talked with two different people before that both say they regret selling their Acura NSX's about a year or two before the prices sky rocketed. I can't say I have any regrets, but the two special cars I came closest to buying was a used 2003 Mach 1 Mustang that I decided was way too much car for me and the guy at the dealership was overly aggressive in trying to get me to buy it, so I wasn't comfortable and a first generation Toyota Celica on Craigslist that I could have afforded to buy, but it was in no way a practical daily driver and buying it would have emptied my savings account. To this day, I regret selling my El Camino, especially for so cheap, but you know, when rent is due in two days and your roommate at the time is unreliable, you gotta do what you gotta do. I loved that car. It was rusted and ugly and beaten up and barely ever worked, but it was awesome.One of the things I hate about this timeline is the Aston Martin Lagonda I didn't buy in the early 2000s is now a $350k car, despite the fact that everyone acknowledges what an utter and total piece of shit it is.
I was at a trade show in Vegas in 2000 or 2001. That's back when the Imperial Palace still had a "car museum" in their penthouse; it had been a Duesenberg museum and was in the process of converting to a used car lot before the whole thing went away. Up at the top, tucked into a corner, forgotten and ignored, was a Lancia Stratos. This Lancia Stratos. I think they wanted $30k for it, but they said they'd take $25k. Which was definitely more than I could afford, and substantially less than the $475k it went for in 2018, and substantially less than the $1.5m several models went for in 2003-2006. A $25k car bought in 2002 and sold for $475k in 2018 would be a 19x appreciation factor. That used to bug me a bit. Then I bought Ethereum at Frontier and decided that regret never gets you anything. My auto shop teacher had a 1931 Mach 1 with the Boss 429 Hemi in it. It sat there rusting away, year after year. He drove it every day but never did anything about the salt damage. Still breaks my heart.
Why did you have to remind me that this awesome website exists? It fills me with "wants" and "gimmes" and nothing even extreme. I mean, look, at less than $2,000 currently, I really, really want this Toyota Tercel. Dala, baby, this car will fix 2020 for us, I just know it.
The cars I lusted for and couldn't afford, contemporaneously, were modest. A friend's little sister was straight up gifted a Subaru XT Coupe at sixteen while I was running carbs through the dishwasher to try and get my donor RX-4 running. We used to haunt the car lots because it was something to do and there was just something about the perpetually-unattainable Mazda MX3. DOHC 1.8L V6, y'all. A kid showed up at college. His dad had bought him one for graduation. He was a nice enough guy but forever a spoiled brat in my eyes. Another kid in school had a family tradition where Grandma and Grandpa gave them $15k towards the car of their choice the minute they turned 16. I had very carefully calculated that to be more than enough money to buy a 1982 Lotus Esprit and put a Rover/Buick 215ci V8 in it with either a Porsche or ZF transaxle. Fucker bought a Prelude. I drove a '77 Buick that I had purchased for $125 because its oil seal was leaking. Ended up fixing the oil leak and driving the fucking thing because the car the mill was supposed to go into took a whole lot longer without the promised parental support. Another buddy got a cherry '67 Camaro that he wrapped around a lamppost within a month while racing his buddy with the '67 Mustang Fastback that he wrapped around the same lamppost a month later, rebuilt, and wrapped around a different lamppost six months later. Meanwhile the TR-7 I spent forever fixing was eclipsed by a different kid whose dad gave him a choice between an '81 TR8 convertible or a '74 Elan. TR8 was dead in eight months, so he also got the Elan. I probably drive a Porsche convertible to avenge my high school self. I doubt I'm the only one.
I briefly worked with Steve Wozniak in the early 1990's when the NSX first came out. He had one in each color, and two black ones... he said he accidentally bought a second black one because he thought he didn't have one, so he let one of his team drive it every day. Woz was driving me to his office in his favorite NSX, and he'd wired up the car stereo to a cellular radio scanner, and we were driving around listening in to people's cell phone calls... It was surreal. Woz was the most careful, meticulous driver I have ever ridden with. The NSX was completely wasted on him. I've talked with two different people before that both say they regret selling their Acura NSX's about a year or two before the prices sky rocketed.