I heard a wise man say once; you'll have a lot more fun driving a Miata at 100% versus a Ferrari at 40%.We weren't in the market for a sports car, but when visiting friends in Palm Springs we attended a street sale. There was a new looking very cute Mercedes SLK230 sitting there. Told the wife she would look good in that and just for fun we walked over to kick the tires and were shocked to see it was only $6500 and had 32,000 miles and was a 1999! Literally owned by a little old lady. It is totally fun, useless for a long trip, no luggage capacity with the top down, but a hardtop with the top up. It has a very complicated mechanical top down mechanism that will need work. Google told me the repair at a Merc dealer would run upwards of $5000 so I did a DIY search, put new o-rings in the hydraulic cylinders and had it done in only 1 week, 30-40 hours of tinkering time and about $50 in parts. BTW the little old lady was 84 and traded the car in on a Porsche. Unless you get lucky like we did and you want tons of pure fun with a very low dickwith factor, I'd opt for one of the new Mazda Miatas. They have a huge fun factor, great reviews and come in retractable hardtop or convertible. And all priced at less than 1/2 of your budget. Oh, and happy retirement.
I owned a Corvette when I was 21 to 33 years old. I heard the early midlife crisis joke as soon as I bought my car sometimes to my face and overhead people talking behind my back. I also apparently was over compensating for something and my Mommy and Daddy bought my car for me as well. I call them the Corvette jealously jokes.My wife and I joke that it is a “mid-life crisis car”. Lol. No offense to anyone here.