Bitten in SE PA

[kopride]

Greetings,

I have lusted after these cars for years and am getting ready to make the plunge. I keep bouncing between dropping 40-45k for a very nice well settled ERA (or comparable) used car to picking up one of these great used FFR bargains in the mid (or low) 20s. I am leaning towards picking up a low cost bargain from a reputable local seller and seeing whether actually owning a crude brutal open roadster meets my expectations, particularly since there seems to be a good inventory of local cars out there in that price range.

My prior performance thrill seeking has been focused on off road motorcycling. However, trail access issues have made this a difficult passion to indulge regularly around here and my KTM gathers more dust in the garage, than on the road. (Even when I can ride, it spends more time in the back of my pick up coming and going, than on the trails.) As that bike sits, I get more and more tempted to buy a road motorcycle, which would be breaking a sacred pre-marital vow. (I am lucky that this vow is much harder to keep than the other vows.) Hence, what is the only 4 wheeled vehicle that provides even close to the experience of riding a high performance motorcycle?

I do have and have had high performance cars in the past, but they have all been sedans (AMG Mercedes, BMWs, etc) so they are really not comparable. If I do pick up a low end bargain, I am hoping that it is not so low end that it discourages me from ever owning another. In a perfect world, I would play with a bargain this summer, love it and then sell it for a minor loss to buy a more high end used one (or have one built to specs)-- after I am sure that this is not a fleeting passion. In a less than perfect world, a bargain would be a relatively painless mistake that I can sell off to someone else who wants to get their feet wet before jumping in whole hog. Given this economy, I would rather not be sitting with over 40k in a car I can't sell.

Any collective wisdom/advice is helpful.