At $5,500, Would You Make This 1998 Acura Integra An Integral Part Of Your Life?
While its two-door brethren may be generally considered to be more lust-worthy, there’s still lots to like about today’s Nice Price or No Dice Integra saloon. Let’s see if that includes its asking price.
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Riding on someone else’s coattails is arguably not the best path to success. We saw a prime example of this in last Friday’s 1976 Custom Cloud. The maker of that Monte Carlo-based coupe was sued shortly after the car’s debut over intellectual property rights due to its Rolls-Royce aping grill and rear-end treatment. Even though now presented in what appears to be extremely nice shape and with low miles, few of you were willing to overlook such wardrobe malfeasance, especially at an $18,000 asking. That ended the day with an 89 percent No Dice loss.
Let’s be honest, Acura is a funny brand. Introduced in the North American market in the mid-1980s as Honda’s upscale entry, the marque led the charge for such copycat efforts by Toyota (Lexus), Nissan (Infiniti), and nearly Mazda (the stillborn Amati).
Acura, however, has never been able to step out of the shadow of its less fancy sibling, Honda. At one point, to overcome its lackluster reputation, Acura took the extreme gambit of throwing out all its well-established model names in preference for a series of nearly interchangeable three-letter alpha names. I’ll bet most of us couldn’t name them all even now, although that may have something to do with how sort of uninspiring or just “OK” many of Acura’s cars have been of late.
On the other hand, this 1998 Acura Integra sedan comes from an era when Acuras had actual, memorable names and were pretty engaging and aspirational. Just like the Hondas of the time, they were also really well-engineered and solidly built, factors supported by this car’s condition after having done 204,262 miles over its quarter-of-a-century life.
Painted in Ruby Red Pearl and sporting a set of handsome factory alloys, the car appears to have been well cared for over that time and those miles. It does show some door dings along the flanks and a fairly noticeable scrape on the rear bumper, but such scars are par for the course with any older car in the Integra’s class. The front bumper also looks like it could stand to be re-positioned on the curb-side for proper panel gaps. On the plus side, good tires — along with an extra set of winter meats — come with the car.
Inside, things are even better. The cabin is a true time capsule of ’90s nostalgia, with patterned gray mouse fur upholstery and a simple, clean dashboard design — the kind you wish Honda would still offer. According to the seller, everything save for the window tint is factory original on the car, right down to the Acura-branded AM/FM/cassette stereo.
Below that sits the shifter for the car’s five-speed manual gearbox. That, in turn, is mated to Honda’s 1.8-liter B18 four, which, in the Integra, makes 140 horsepower and 129 lb-ft of torque, with both numbers making their appearance well into the upper rev range.
The seller says the car has enjoyed a recent oil change, while the timing belt was done just last year. A fat stack of maintenance and repair receipts for that work plus most of the prior will accompany the car in the sale. It has a clean title and what the seller mysteriously mentions as “some quirks.”
Whatever those might be will simply have to await a prospective buyer’s deeper dive via a thorough inspection of the car and those receipts. Since we don’t have the means for that, we’ll just have to gauge the $5,500 asking price using just the pictures and the description, plus our own personal sensibilities.
As a sensible sort, what is your take on this interesting Integra and that $5,500 price tag? Does that seem fair, given the car’s condition? Or does that price feel less integral to this Acura’s eventual sale?
You decide!
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H/T to Glemon for the hookup!
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