Looking for a new car

[388cube_edxr8]

Lo all

Just after some advice on a used car purchase. I'm a bit if a nutty professor, so looking at doing a sort of DIY hybrid project. For this reason I need a used car, but have the following requirements.

- It needs to be cheap, but road legal (minimal rust, straight body, etc.)
- It needs to be manual, and front wheel drive (never thought I'd want that again)
- It needs to have as much free space in the engine bay as possible, to accommodate the regenerative braking system.
- An engine with a carby would be a lot easier to work with, as opposed to EFI.

I was thinking along the lines of an old 1990ish Corolla, as I can testify that these are pretty go-hard reliable little cars, but they don't have as much free space in the engine bay as I need, so thought I would put it out there to see if anyone has any other ideas.

Once I get hold of the car I'll post a thread of the buildup of a non-electric hybrid.

[Dave_au]

Telstar TX5 AT (pre 92) jumps to mind, I had one and they were bulletproof.

[Yellow_Festiva]

The engine bay of a Festiva is very un-cluttered, lots of free space above the gearbox side of the engine bay.

You can score one for next to nothing, however they are efi...

I was brainstorming a similar idea once, and was thinking of using a vehicle with a 4x4 system that only kicks in when needed. Leave it as a front wheel drive vehicle, and have all the hardware in place to use the rear drive system for an additional drive or regenerative braking system. (Honda HRV was a good base car I thought).

[Mr Hardware]

AE92/AE94 with 4AGE
wolf in sheep's clothing.

[barbarian]

Nissan Pulsar, Ford Laser etc. plenty of space around them 1.6ltr engines

[ebxr8240]

Austin Kimberly or 1800 Lol...

[Mongoose]

Best thing i can think of, is a mid-late 80's magna (4cyl) charades, or ignoring FWD, go a sigma, very roomy engine bays.