Does anyone else look at the prices being asked, and often paid, for cars like this Acura Integra Type R and wonder if they’ve just woken from a 40-year cryogenic sleep?
With two days to go at the time of writing, this 2000 Teg had been bid up to $111,000 and is almost certainly to creep at least a little higher before the virtual hammer falls this Saturday at 7pm EST.
Granted, that hammer is owned by the Bring-a-Trailer auction site, whose bidders tend to work themselves into a frenzy and pay over the odds for almost anything. And also granted, the Integra Type R is arguably the most exciting front-wheel-drive car ever offered with license plates, plus this one has just 7k miles on the clock. But this is huge money.
Apparently bought new by the seller’s father in Connecticut in June 2000, this Integra’s Phoenix Yellow paint contrasts nicely with the black cloth and Alcantara bucket seat interior. A look at the instrument binnacle reveals an 8400 rpm redline and a 6,649-mile odometer count that suggests the orange tach needle and that redline aren’t that well acquainted.
Related: Do You Like This 2022 Integra? It’s From Honda And It’s Only For China
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Under the hood, there’s the familiar B18 VTEC-equipped four-cylinder motor that sends its 195 hp (198 PS) to the front wheels through a five-speed manual transmission and a limited-slip differential. Not so familiar is the visual condition of those components. The bay is so clean you’d believe the seller if he said it had done 7 miles, not 7,000. Even the underfloor area looks immaculate, as do the wheels, though since those Bridgestone Potenza tires are the originals, they’re probably about as hard as the pavement they’re sitting on.
The great thing about the DC2 Integra Type R, and the reason Acura wants to tap into our fondness for it with the new 2023 Integra, is that it was just about the sharpest, most focused performance car ordinary folk could afford. It was the kind of car that would get nods of respect at track days from guys driving $300k Porsche 911 GT2s. Yet it was affordable when new in the late 1990s, and for much of the 20-odd years after that, you could pick them up on the used market for less than $10k.
Prices have really taken off in the last few years though, but it looks like this car is going to set a new record. It looks like a once-in-a-blue-moon chance to buy an almost unused example of an iconic car, but what do you think about the sky-high price? Leave a comment and let us know.
