May have found a winter car, have a few questions.
 

I posted a while back that I was looking for a decent sporty winter car for my wife, she has a 96 RS. I came across a 98 Eclipse GST that was in pretty good shape for 6000 and only had about 85000 miles. On the surface everything looks fine and it seems to run and drive fine. My main question has to do with how fast the cars are stock, if anybody on here might happen to know. It's bone stock, original turbo and everything. When I mashed it I thought I heard the turbo spool up but I wasn't anywhere near impressed. I test drove an Eclipse previously and when the guy mashed it, it planted my *** back in the seat, would've given my WS6 a damn good run for it's money. Now granted, the car that we previously drove had been built up but I did expect a little more from a stock GST. Just wondering if you guys could give me a little insight. One other thing I noticed is that there was no boost gauge inside the car but the guy did have one hooked up one under the hood. I read that it was running about 10 PSI at idle then when I revved it by hand I noticed the gauge dropped down to 0. Granted I don't know much of **** about turbos but I'm pretty sure the boost is supposed to increase as the exhaust flow increases. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about something, I'm here to learn.

I once drove a friends Galant VR4 and it was a very quick car. Although, he had his engine pumping out 325 horsies. Those little 4cyl turbo's can be fun in their own way.
You might want to check to see how well the exhaust is flowing. I had a Mazda RX7 Turbo and the boost gauge barely rose when I got on it. I pulled down the pre-cat converter and it was all melted down and broken up inside. It was obvious that it was restricting exhaust flow quite a lot. After breaking apart and removing all the innards of the cat, it was a totally different engine. The turbo did spool up better and the boost gauge climbed noticeably more (as it's supposed to). And that was with only 80,000 miles on the ticker.

Hey, I considered getting a Eclipse for a long time before I got my Camaro so I know a bit about them. They are pretty slow stock 210HP and 214TQ. The GST is a FWD turbo model. $6000 is pretty high for a completely stock GST. You should be looking for a GSX in that price range. The GSX is the AWD model. They have pretty bad turbo lag when they're stock and if you plan to upgrade the turbo system you will also need to do fuel if you plan on boost above 12-15psi. Thay are fairly cheap to mod and seem like pretty good cars to me. GST 5sp 0-60 6.5 to 7.0 GSX 5sp 0-60 6.0-6.5. I hope this helped a little bit. I'm not sure exactly what you're looking for so if you need more info I may have it.

I'm mainly looking for a turn key daily driver for my wife. I'm not looking to make this a project car, at least not anytime soon. My project in the near future is to drop an LS3 or LS7 in my WS6, and that's going to require enough money. I'm just looking for a semi-sporty front wheel or all wheel drive car that my wife can drive in the winter yet still have some fun in. Thanks for the insight guys.

Well, then I would say an Eclipse seems like a pretty good car. They defiantly have a lot of potential if you do turn it into a project. $6000 seems pretty steep for a GST IMO though.

Well, askin ain't gettin you know!
How much does the seller know about cars? I would low-ball his price (in the 4's) since there is a potential problem with the expensive-to-fix turbo. It's a buyers market, squeeze him!
Although, I hate when people do that to me for stupid reasons. I just sold a real nice Vette (got what I wanted) but most of the lookers are ruthless with the ridiculous offers. Considering the car market, everybody seems to assume you're desperate when selling a car.

I agree with Camaro 69 low-ball him. Use KBB to your advantage too. The car blue books at about 5k, and like 69 said use the turbo as an excuse to get the price down further.

Does this Eclipse have a manual trans or automatic?

+1 on getting him to lower the price!. good luck.

It's an automatic, which I hate but it's good for the wife. Trying to teach her how to drive stick hasn't been fun. He might take a low ball offer. He said his girlfriend was pregnant and needed a more practical car. I looked it up on KBB after I posted the message, didn't realized that booked for that low. Since it is all stock he's going to have to come down quite a bit. The only thing that isn't stock is it has a ram air hood and the front fenders have some louvers or some **** on them. Obviously nothing that is going to push the price up anywhere near that much. Well, I appreciate all the help. It was a hell of a lot more than I expected to get on a Camaro forum. I'll have to come up with a figure I'm willing to pay, make an offer, and see if it goes where I want it to. I'm not desperate so I'm not pressed into it by any means at least. Thanks again.