The Gobot MR2s are a hoot to drive and far more available (and reliable) than an X-1/9. That said, I wouldn't work nearly that hard to keep one running. We discovered early on that the quickest way to fudge an intake or radiator hose was to befriend the local auto parts store and wander around back amongst their formed shit to find something to cannibalize; I woulda hose-barbed and RTV'd the thing and called it a day. Have you seen the Toaster Project? I find it slavish to the point of insipid but I'm also the kind of troglodyte that wonders why you need a hose clamp and a box cutter where a fuckin' Leatherman will do.
I looked for other cars with similarly shaped pipes, and I didn't seem to find any--there are no pick-n-pulls out this way, and the proprietors of the various junkyards are no-nonsense characters that don't take kindly to requests to "just find something kinda like this". I thought about a couple ways of doing this but decided that if I was going to bother to re-make the intake pipe I might as well make it good. Otherwise I'd have just scrounged the classifieds on various MR2 forums until I got a used replacement in reasonable shape. I agree on the toaster...but then again, I don't have a book deal as a result of doing something that seemingly pointless! If I were to go about making something complex from scratch, I'd rather read this instead.
Naaah. A restored x1/9 has a nonzero resale value. Not only that but the suspension is eminently adjustable. You can tweak the shite out of an X1/9. Plus the X1/9 is kind of the apogee of Moroder-is-god go-go Bertone styling while the Gobot MR2s are kind of the nadir of various Japanese houses ripping off Italdesign poorly. I can see one MR2. Two MR2s is... Whelp, let's put it this way. It's a better car than the Fiero, which isn't saying much. But the Fiero is the basis for an entire generation of kit cars. It's an extensible little monster.In France the MR2 name was shortened to MR to avoid the similarity in pronunciation of MR2 with the French words est merdeux, meaning "(it) is shitty".
In my defense, one was supposed to become a parts car...that one also has a supercharger. I've been thinking about grafting a double A-arm suspension onto an MR2 for a while, but I'd be doing that just "because I can" because there's no way in hell it'd be economical or rational to do that.