lexus IS300, opinions Options

[Jdog1385]

im actually thinking of buying a 2002 lexus IS300. not sure if i want to spend all this money for the swap and manual conversion for my celi. any opinions are welcome.

[Jdog1385]

SC300 would be my choice since most people think 400 is better because of the number and it has a V8, but the 300 has a lot of potential, only thing is good luck finding a stick they made them but very few had them. IMO the SC is much more sporty than the IS and as before you get the 2JZ in it. I just checked autotrade and found 159 SC300's for less than 10,000 and 1 IS for less than 10,000 and it's an '01 salvage car. it's up to you an IS is more functional due to it having 4 doors. My secretary is from Port LIncoln, Australia and she was telling me it's about $3,000-$5,000 shipping and in NC it's a couple thousand to get it legalized (NC bases a lot of their emissions standards off of Cali) and you can get an Altezza RS200 with a 6 speed from Australia for less than $15,000USD and be one of the few people in the US with a real Altezza. Check this one out, remember the price is NZD: http://www.autopoint.co.nz/DesktopDefault....ias=autopointnz

yea the is300 is still expensive right now in terms of resale value but im sure it will go down when the new model comes out. im looking at a 2002 b/c thats when the 5 spead manual tranny was introduced. the models before that one are automanual or just automatic.
im really thinking about doing the altezza from australia. im going to look into it this weekend.

i'm getting a sc300 in the next month or two, its great lots of mods available nice look, and a lexus to boot.

nice...are you getting rid of the celi?

Before someone gets on here flaming me for not liking Lexus... truth is... I don't but IMO they are jsut an excuse for Toyota to jack up the price, IS300 is a good candidate for raising the price on normally low cost performance cars, anyways again the SC300 is the best bang for the buck from Lexus mostly due to the fact that they're older and they have that nice higher priced SC400 to overshadow the 300 making it cheaper and very available. I know that the Getrag can be swapped in the SC300 also since it's based on a similar chassis as the Supra.

it sux that the is300 didnt come in as a toyota in the states but they knew they could get more money for it if they made it a lexus. im going to look at the sc300 but i doubt ill go for it. i really want a car that is less than 5 years old.

im also looking at a suburu impreza rs 2.5 or the newer wrx sti.