1989 Nissan 240SX SX from North America - Comments

I bought the car and saftied it for around $500. The alternator blew the first day I bought it. The motor blew 2 and a half days after I got the car. The transmission bracket was rusted right through after taking out the transmission, and it costs $159.99 to replace. It rusts very quick and the frame started rusting before the body so it looked very nice on the outside, but underneath it was shot. The motors are very expensive to buy second hand and extremely hard to find.

If you have lots of money and want this car then buy it. Parts are extremely hard to find and tend to be very expensive. they are a fun car to drive and look nice, but it will cost you a lot to maintaine it. I don't know how fast it is because I only had it on the road for such a short time, but it did have good acceleration. The interior looks good and with some blacks lights and a nice stereo it looks very cool.

Parts for this car are very easy to find and are not expensive at all.

You can replace the stock engine with another stock engine for about 400 dollars or less.

The other complaints have nothing to do with the build of the car as most of it comes from wear over time and poor maintenance.

Don't expect gold when paying buying for pennies.

I too picked one of these cars up for under $500 and experienced a wide range of mechanical problems. However, the car had 220,000 miles on the original engine, and any replacement parts I've needed to look in to were easily found & relatively cheap (replaced clutch master cylinder for $23). I too have found rust to be the bane of this car. I've found that it seems to start inside the car at the point where the firewall meets the frame channel running down either side of the car. Moisture gets trapped in the sound deadening material underneath the interior carpet and causes the car to rot from the inside out. A hole forms behind the carpet and you don't usually notice it until it has come through the seam lines welded in each of the fender wells, unfortunately by then it's a huge problem to go about fixing...

Well out of all of them I have seen, I've had no problems, but I can tell you that any car that you get from states where it snows will be rusty, because of the salt they use when plowing the roads.

I just picked up an 89 for $100. I've put a water pump and thermostat in, and redid all the rusty brake lines for less than $125, and this car is fast. Handles great, even though it's rusty because it came from Iowa.

Northern cars normally have bad bodies as southern cars have bad engines (people use water instead of anti freeze, and water corrodes the engine).