Topic: Aaand I think team Sputnik has a car... Again. How much does it cost?
# Bye Saturn
After saying good-bye to our chopped up no-longer-legal Saturn, we went on a mad search looking for a vehicle that a) costs little, b) operable enough to be ready for February, and c) is somewhat funky, beyond the usual sport compact type of stuff.
Couldn't find anything that suits our hearts.
# Hi Wagon
So, we went with the second best option - the team voted unanimously to expropriate my wagon that I use mostly to store my flammable/combustible crap and my canoe (their reasoning is that the canoe is trash, and that I'll have a garage to keep the crap in by the end of this month).
The car is... drumroll... 1986 Nissan Stanza Wagon. Apart from AC and premium stereo, it is an absolutely bare-bones, manual everything vehicle with a good bit of rust and a broken back window that I got for $250 a couple years ago. Since then I changed brakes/wheels/tires (saftey, right? 
), replaced the back window with a crude $50 sheet of lexan, busted the side back window (oops), and replaced the exhaust with bits of whatever I had handy at the moment after the original fell off at the collector (needless to say, it leaks like a mofo and sags, needs urgent replacement).
# Economics of it
Would it be fair to set the base price at $250, and count the canoe as an integral part of the car? I got it for nothing in the summer of '09, and it's been on top of the wagon ever since. I'm sure we could use an extra $50 bill that we could get for it
The upside is that the car is somewhat lightweight, has some good-condition stuff that can be stripped and sold, and is pretty much ready to go apart from the stripping, roll cage, and a properly sized radiator. Runs great and stops on a dime.
The downside is that none of that extra cash does us any good 'cause the car has absolutely zero aftermarket. I can't imagine spending more than $60 on the cooling system when using junkyard parts, so I have no idea what to use it for. The engine is said to explode spectacularly with any amount of pressure significantly over atmospheric, the shocks are factory and are OK, and if we weld up the doors we'll cure the chassis rigidity problem for good. There are no junky turbo 200SX's left on the planet, and swapping an 8-liter cadillac subframe/drivetrain is a bit over our skill level for now (at least until summer). No other engine easily swaps in, unless it's out of Japan, and then it's way over budget.
The least expensive EASY engine transplant is a CA18DET, but those are ~$700 at the local JDM depot. There's a weird $600 one from Auster XTT on ebay right now (non-intercooled, possibly the worst of the family) for sale in Montreal, but still too expensive, even if we go to Canada to pick it up. Would be tits to have one of those, as it is arguably not so much better than the original, but alas, it's over the budget.
# Theme?
Since it doesn't quite look like the original Sputnik, I'm thinking of a Buran look (soviet Shuttle knock-off), but keeping the saturn-sputnik logo, so that we don't change the theme much. Thoughts/comments? 
