It's just supply and demand. I had one of the better taken care of cars on this forum, still had all original paint, only a few tiny dings here and there, non-ripped original leather, no cracked dash vents, 90k miles, etc. Had all the BPU go fast mods too, and fully sorted out. I got $9k for mine from a dealer, he priced it at $13 or $14k, I don't remember. But it took him MONTHS to sell, and I don't know what he ended up getting for it. I know he got at least $12k, but that's still really low considering the bang for the buck. I tried to sell my car locally for a couple months for $12k, but couldn't. (Got offered $10k by one guy, but turned him down, didn't want him owning it and ricing it out, and also refused to sell to a kid who was buying his first car.)
To put the pricing in perspective, we traded in my wife's 2007 Tiburon GT with 52k on it for $10k the same year easily at Carmax. It sold almost immediately. My car was infinitely better in every way, but it takes a certain person who is looking for a 20+ year old car to buy it. The market is just really small for these cars now, and I really don't see that changing any time soon. Most of the guys that started with this platform when it was new have long since moved on to the next best thing. Jack T got into GTR's. Quite a few got into 911 turbos. Even Jeff L has put his car on the back burner and has gotten into go kart racing from what I hear, the 3/S is just not a good candidate for autoX.
Maybe someday pricing will rebound for these cars, but I'd say it's a long shot. By that time, Mitsubishi may have gone belly up as a car manufacturer, and the only places to get any parts whatsoever will be junkyards.




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