I'm looking to buy my first car, and since I'm going to have to deal with the terrible New England winters, I decided to go for the AWD, after hearing horror stories about the RWD G35s in the tough snow. Any tips or advice I should look for in buying this car?

 

I've never had a rwd in the snow but in the rain its bad so I could only imagine. If you have 5,000 cash I would go to a dealership and put it down on a used g35x for about 7,000. I don't think I've seen any as low as 5,000 and if it is that low its going to have a lot of mileage on it.

 

I would agree with this statement...but for $7,000 - you're going to have a tough time finding one that isn't rusted out (you mentioned you're in the snow belt) or beat up. I'd look in the $8k - $10k range.

And remember, the AWD models are just more expensive to maintain...ask me how I know.

 

I did a quick search on craigslist and a few awd g35's came up for about 7-8k and even 1 comes up for 5400. Then i looked at the posts, the 7-8k cars have over 140K+ mileage. The one that was only 5k was salvaged title. all 3 were very well maintained (as far as appearance) but any car with that kind of mileage is asking for more money to be spent on parts to be made reliable.

 

Right...you're finding what I predicted you would. Again, hold out for the more expensive car and you'll save yourself a bunch of headaches in the long run. Start looking at other used car websites - other than CL. Set up search alerts...call a few dealerships and let them know what you're looking for.

Good luck, man! I love my 2005 G35x (bought it from the original owner) and look forward to some snow this winter.

 

Since I live in new england, these awd cars in general are wildly popular so the prices tend to be lower, due to the fact that there is so many of them. I've found 10 within my price range, from 90-150k miles. they all also have clean carfaxes with regular maintenance.

 

Good! Get one with the lowest possible miles!

It's funny - folks in the PNW love AWD vehicles (Subarus in particular) but never discovered the G35x...they are fairly rare up here - I just searched last night, there are only two posted on CL with less than 120k miles.

 

It seems super underated. There's actually very few people over here that drive anything without AWD or 4WD capability due to the fact that anything else is pretty much worthless on the ice coast.