A bit worried about long term costs and reliability - should I be?

[rondocap]

Yeah - trust me, I am far from the inexperienced guy who buys a cheap Porsche and then regrets it. I went through this already with the Mercedes when I was younger - and learned from it.

This car has motivated me to do a lot more "DIY" stuff. The manual transmission and everything just makes me feel it is more of a hands on car, and when I accomplish a little task, even as simple as putting in the air filter - I feel pretty good. Surely enough my Prius does not give me that same satisfaction. ha.

I just need to up my skills in certain tasks. I am still a novice when it comes to DIY stuff - even spark plugs scare me a bit!

And tony: That lists seems awfully familiar and in line with most of the things I'd like to do with my car. I guess it's all fairly normal. (The only thing that could reduce the cost was if those suspension parts lasted until at least 100k)