5 More Classic Dream Cars You Really Want but Will Regret Owning

Why we love it: What is there to say about the pop culture appeal of the DeLorean DMC-12 that hasn’t already been burned into our brains by a thousand rewatches of the Back to the Future franchise? This is a car with movie-star cachet, three-comma doors, and a conversation-piece stainless-steel body that was unique until it was hijacked as a publicity stunt by a certain EV brand.

For a very long time, the DMC-12 was also an inexpensive oddity, a vehicle that was movie famous but hamstrung by its somewhat lackluster performance. That time is now past, as its cinematic bona fides, Radwood enthusiasm, and a dwindling supply of decent drivers (less than 9,000 were ever built) have pushed the DeLorean’s prices up to the point where it’s no longer a casual purchase. Still, many are willing to fork over however many dollars are necessary to make every excursion feel like a cameo role, and we’re not immune to its charms, either.

Why it will break our hearts: Any low-production car instantly comes with a part supply problem looming in the background. This is especially true for the DeLorean’s body panels, some of which are becoming difficult to source because the factory simply didn’t build all that many replacements to begin with.

This can make even minor fender benders—especially if they involve the front left of the car, or the hood—expensive and nerve-wracking when trying to track down new stainless steel. On the current market, concerns over DMC-12 body panels have seen painted cars sell for a little more than half what a “naked” DeLorean goes for, because the instant presumption is you’ll be in for expensive body repairs hidden beneath.

Those distinctive gullwing doors also come with an asterisk in the form of a deteriorating box that holds their hinges together on the roof. There can be invisible gremlins slowly chewing through the lesser steel this structure was built of, causing it to separate from the roof and make you a prisoner of the DMC-12’s cabin until you pay for the intense amount of labor required to repair it—up to a third of the vehicle’s overall purchase price.

Why we love it: The Aston Martin DB7 represented a transition from the boutique automaker into the much more complex world of being owned by a major conglomerate. Ford’s purchase served to modernize much of the brand’s processes and saw it collaborate more closely in terms of parts sharing and production techniques with its corporate sibling at the time, Jaguar.

While some might lament the involvement of Jaguar—the DB7’s platform was an evolution of the XJ-S we’ve already discussed, and it added a supercharged version of that company’s six-cylinder engine to the options list—the pairing also played a major role in pushing Aston Martin further up the supercar ladder. To better separate the DB7 from the new Jaguar XK8, Ford elected to gift the brand with the resources to build its first V-12 engine, which arrived in the Vantage model at the end of the 1990s.

Any sports car with a 12-cylinder engine and an available six-speed manual transmission deserves adoration from old-school enthusiasts. That, and its gorgeous James Bond styling, along with the suspension and chassis updates that went with the motor, instantly elevated the DB7 Vantage into the upper echelon of teenage bedroom wall poster cars.

Why it will break our hearts: Add the DB7 Vantage to the list of 12-cylinder British cars that are cheap because of the fear its drivetrain evokes in owners. This coupe is the least expensive V-12 Aston Martin for a reason, and that’s because it adds considerable maintenance heft to an already needy design.

Forget the engine for a moment. All DB7s present an electrical system that’s notoriously unreliable and prohibitively expensive to repair from a parts perspective (it can cost almost $2,000 when a window regulator goes out, for example). This kind of nickel-and-diming to the poorhouse is typical of classic super coupes. Other DB7 trouble spots include the key fobs, suspension bushings, and the air conditioning system, which requires more than $3,000 in labor simply to remove the dash and get at the borked (and expensive) evaporator.

Back to the V-12: Even though conceptually it’s two Ford Duratec V-6s mated together, it’s still 5.9 liters of sadness awaiting any owner that lets it overheat, a point of failure common enough due to bad thermostats. If the engine’s internals avoid being cooked alive, you must still contend with coil pack placement that bakes them to breakdown and then stiffs you with another enormous labor bill simply to access them beneath the motor’s complicated intake.

Why we love it: The B5 generation S4 was a coming-out party for Audi’s performance division in North America. The brand presented buyers with a choice between a handsome sedan and an even more attractive wagon, each of which boasted a twin-turbo V-6 engine, standard all-wheel drive, and the availability of a six-speed manual gearbox. For the first time, Audi had a legitimate luxury performer that could go head to head with BMW’s M3 in terms of straight-line speed while also adding the extra dimension of year-round capability, and in the case of the long-roof model, family-friendly practicality.

While 250 horsepower and 258 lb-ft of torque might not seem like much to get excited about from a modern perspective, the S4’s 2.7-liter engine was very, very tunable, and strong aftermarket support made them excellent candidates for a substantial spec-sheet buff-up. That same community exists around them decades later, making them a tempting target, especially for wagon fans seeking an SUV alternative or those who appreciate the substantial discount that these cars present over an E46 M3.

Why it will break our hearts: The Audi S4 is a maintenance-heavy car, and that’s problematic for a few reasons. The first is its tiny engine bay, which is packed to the brim with turbos, associated plumbing, and the kind of casual approach to 2000s-era electronics quality that parent company Volkswagen was infamous for.

If you plan to work on the car yourself, you quickly learn to pad out your estimates for how long any given repair work will take, and if you’re taking it to a specialist, that same math will add substantial dollars to the bill. Things like timing belts must be excavated from under a mountain of covers, pipes, and other engine parts, and given how much trouble it is to take everything apart and put it back together again, you’ll likely see a project blossom into “while we’re in there” territory as you replace everything that’s now accessible.

If you’re not already exhausted by all of the above, consider the army of vacuum and ventilation lines that require regular inspection and replacement due to age and heat, or the factory turbos that are simply incapable of keeping up, long term, with any boost in boost. Switching to the underside of the car, the S4’s chassis is stuffed with a surprising number of bushings, features fast-wearing axles and related driveline components, and generally suffers from overengineering that drives up the cost of replacement parts without necessarily fending off premature failure. Then there’s the transmission, which in manual cars requires rebuilding more often than six-speeds found in other Audis.

The Audi S4 is a legitimate modern classic, but the B5 platform it rides on was pushed to the edge in the pursuit of performance. It’s not so much the threat of being left holding the ownership bag when a mechanical catastrophe occurs that sets us up for heartbreak, but rather the steady cascade of failures and replacements that’s likely to gradually wear us down until we’re gazing longingly at our neighbor’s relatively trouble-free BMW—you know, the one they actually get to drive.

Why we love it: Japan’s Bubble Era produced some of the wildest and most technologically advanced sports cars of the 1990s. Of these, few boasted as many whizz-bang gadgets and features as the Mitsubishi 3000GT. Also sold as the Dodge Stealth, this wedge-shaped grand tourer was loaded with gear like four-wheel steering, active aerodynamics, an electronically controlled suspension system, a driver-tunable exhaust, and an all-wheel-drive setup that let it take full advantage of the nearly 300 horsepower produced by its twin-turbo V-6.

Other JDM would-be supercars had one or more of the above, but the 3000GT was the only one of its cohort that had the entire package (including pop-up headlights on early models). This made it roughly the equivalent of a video game hero come to life, and even though its full load of equipment made it pretty porky, it managed to leverage excellent grip and strong acceleration when terrorizing the streets in search of American muscle cars to embarrass. When the drag racing was done, it was also remarkably comfortable to drive daily, making it a double threat as a commuter.

Why it will break our hearts: Everything we said about the Audi S4’s underhood area being tight? Forget a pair of hands: This Mitsubishi puts its engine in a fender-vise that makes it tough to wedge even a screwdriver in between all the intercooler piping, turbochargers, and accessories. The 3000GT and the Stealth, when found in high-performance trim (VR4 and R/T, respectively) are well known for the lack of engine bay real estate, complicating and expanding any repair project.

That’s especially problematic for the car’s many computer control units, most of which are located in extremely hard to reach areas that necessitate much disassembly and gnashing of teeth. The sheer amount of electronics present in the Mitsubishi makes it an almost constant game of replacement roulette when it comes to diagnosing why one of its cutting-edge (for the ’90s) features is no longer working.

Those advanced systems were so problematic that even when the 3000GT was still on sale, the manufacturer began to gradually phase out its wilder gear. Over time, the active aero, adaptive suspension, and exhaust controls were eliminated in a bid to simplify this amazingly complex machine. The Japanese market even saw a fully stripped-down model that also lost four-wheel steering (and, surprisingly antilock brakes).

If those features were giving Mitsubishi dealer techs fits when the car was new, imagine what they’re like when trying to maintain them in the modern era—or even find the parts required? No thanks, we say, preferring to break things off before the relationship has even started rather than having our goodwill ground to dust by the electronic ghosts of 35-year-old tech.