No one had mentioned the true sleeper of American cars. The current Pontiac GTO. real world car, 420 hp and will eat all but exotica for lunch. easily found for under 20K used. This has the zo6 motor in a real world 4 seater car. Great handling, killer brakes, and decent build quality.
If you want a car that will be fast and still insurable, try a 540 I BMW with the stick, It will handle as well as a most of the sports cars discussed here, with 4 doors, a sleeper attitude and nearly the HP of the M series without the upcharge from the insurance companies. My wife drives one as a daily driver and loves it. I love it too, but rarely get to drive it.
IMHO, the mustangs are always one step away from being super cars. I had a 5.0 for a few months, and it was nice, but had some real handling miscues to go with the HP it was upped to. The shifter was horrid and the brakes would not stand for long term spirited driving without going away.
What ever you do, do not dump the Nova if it is in repairable shape, The upside of these is going to be huge as the "status" muscle cars go astronomic, the econo muscle cars are really picking in worth.
trying to find a good nova, dart, duster, tempest, even a maverick is getting really hard.
For foreign cars, I would look at the subaru, a toyota celica, a BMW 3 or 5
the infiniti I and M are pretty good cars, actually really good cars.
the G35 is a offshoot of the japanese only Skyline and the Z350 sports coupe, early models were way underrated in the HP dept. It was listed as a 260 hp motor, but they would run off and hid from many cars in the 300 and up classes. Whether this was to slide them under a insurance cap or what is not known, the same motor picked up 40 hp in the ratings with no part number change, so it was a fib. The G series are front motor, rear drive cars that are flat out fun to drive, I had one after my dealer was unable to repair my Frontier's transfer cases issues for a couple of months, The first year frontiers had a computer issue that would engage the transfer case for no apparent reason.
Porsches are cool, but fragile and need TLC from a dealer to keep on spot.
In the past they were horrible cars to have in any kind of inclement weather as they had almost no undercoating, (it added weight) and the old time wags would say if you pulled a porsche into your garage and turned off the lights and listened, you could hear it rust...Newer porsches are supposed to be better, but I will wait a few years to see...
The smaller Mercedes C class cars have jumped a long way in the sports dept, going from faculty status cars, to down right zippy now that stick shifts and clutch pedals are available again. the C230K convertable is a sweet ride.
I would stay away from the audi's unless you have a good deal close by, Many of the AUDI's are tremendous cars, but when they go south, they go in a big hurry.
