DocBeech

iTrader: (1)

no feel of hp in a rotary engine lol, smooth as glass. My first car i ever bought was the cobra terminator. If you want to learn to drive stick well, do it in a rear wheel driver car. If you floor a front wheel driver car steering is out of the question. You live in Virgina which has tons of windy roads, a straight line car isn't the answer here. Look for a car with a great suspension to take advantage of your winding roads. I can tell you from owning a mustang in the past, they dive a lot and have incredible body sway. Not the car for twisties but then again neither is a camaro. I've driven the trans am, iroc, and stock camaro cars none of them were built to be much more than straight line cars.

Eclipse is a huge pos. Edmunds rates it at 6/10. Where as they rate the RX8 at 8/10. If you go on just the interior alone even people that rated the performance of the eclipse high they gave the interior 3/5 at best with the RX8 going for 5/5. The cost of owner ship of the eclipse is almost the same when you look at depreciation and maintenance. The fuel mileage is rated the same, and the repairs are rated around 1500 dollars a year for both vehicles as well. .48 cents a mile is what the costs of upkeep are. For both cars. Edmunds actually lists the eclipse at costing 500 dollars more per year.

Being that said, the eclipse probably has cheaper mods. Its a 5 speed automatic instead of 6. It's rear wheel drive, and is much uglier lol. With the cost of maintenance being the same for either car, and the average cost for both being .48 cents per mile. The RX8 is listed to depreciate slower. By about 400 dollars a year. If you can learn to drive a manual then I would go with the RX8.