914 Daily Driver?, What do you think? Options

[Eric Taylor]

I'm looking for a car that's a good daily driver, that I can get in and drive every day back and forth from campus to my apartment. I've got an audi right now, but it get's horriable gas milage, and is just like every other audi really expensive to repair and not something that I can work on. So my thinking is that If I could find a nice rust free car for around $5000, with reciepts and maybe new paint that it would make a good daily driver. The pluses are that I already know a lot about how to work on them, and i'm deffinatly not afraid to do thing's on it. I've already got a good solid mostly rust free restoration canidate that I will continue to work on, however it's gona take a lot of years, and money to make it what I want to to be. So what do you guys think? Is this fesiable or am I off my rocker?
Eric

Oh yeah, I should mention that I'll probably be making a couple 100 mile drives a month in it, that might cause a problem, but let me know what you guys think

[anthony]

The question is how much hassle do you want to introduce into your life. A 914 might be fine as a daily driver if you want to spend at least 1 weekend a month working on a car.

I bought my first new car because after 8 years of ownership with a '77 BMW 320i I was tired of having an old car. It was reliable and only left me stranded once in 8 years but it was a pain in the ass. I was always doing something to that car to keep it going.

The other issue is that buying a nice, clean, rust free 914 and then turning it into a daily driver is doing a disservice to the car. A car like that should be reserved for weekend drives on twisty roads. Letting it get beat by the sun all day and dinged up in the schools parking lot and driving it in the rain is just killing the car earlier than necessary. Buy a beater with a good engine if that's what you want to do.