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I'm in a similar boat, and as far as I can tell, ability > tires > drive wheels. It isn't that they aren't important, but people tend to place faaaaaaar too high a value on drive layout for winter driving.

Now, on the track, it makes a BIG difference. In the snow, however, your goal is safety... not competitive times.

The RX-8 handles beautifully and is a lot of fun on the track... but it's woefully underpowered and very difficult to modify.

Very unfortunate, as it's such a great platform.

Like Zak said, the drive wheels don't have much to do with actual driving dynamics. That's all tires and differentials.

Four wheel drive is great for a lot of reasons, but in the winter it's only real benefit is acceleration - getting you unstuck or up hills. You're not less likely to crash while moving in an S4 as compared to an M3.

Save yourself $20k and get an IS300 (previous version) instead. It's a much better car.

Pretty big gearhead here. My most important requirements:

price < $20,000, weight < 3500 lbs, go > 200 hp / torque, rear or four wheel drive, fully independent suspension, limited slip differential, manual transmission available, four seats

The reasonable contenders:

2000-2004 Audi S4 (even though it's too heavy)

96-99 BMW M3

1999-2004 BMW 3-series (non M)

2002-2005 Lexus IS300

2005-2006 Saab 9-2X (WRX in disguise)

2002-2005 Subaru Impreza WRX

2004 Volkswagen Golf R32

2005-2006 Volvo S40 T5-AWD

Out of all of those, the old M3 is my personal favorite... followed closely by the IS300. For the price range, I can't recommend anything not on this list. My personal experience is relatively frequent hobbyist track racing & autocross, lots of test driving, and loads of greasemonkeying.

Seems like you may be looking for some sort of aggregator that can interface with other auction sites (both buying and selling) as well as doing its own listings.

What's eBay's precedent in allowing websites to repost scraped data from its listings? It'd be easy as all get-out. My guess is that something like this has been tried.

I mean, it's one thing if your site has very little interaction with its users. If you want to have any sort of meaningful long-term relationship, though, go ahead and verify them.

Two huge reasons that activation emails are worthwhile:

- validation (to a reasonable extent) that a user is who they say they are

- enhanced security for users

The whole war on sign up forms and the like is far overblown imo. If your users are going to have even a moderate level of ongoing interaction with your site (especially if your site has social aspects to it) it is necessary to include some form of identity verification.

I, for one, would think quite poorly of a company that allowed someone else to sign up for an account using my email address.

Right, that's the obvious solution. I'm still curious to see if anyone has come up with a different way of doing things, though.

+1 for the Squirrel Hill and Shadyside neighborhoods in Pittsburgh. Incredibly cheap housing, biotech jobs are numerous, and there's more capital available than you'd think. CMU & Pitt churn out lots of science and engineering students as well.

Major cons: cold winters (it hit the single digits recently), shitty road surfaces

Starting as a C-corp from the beginning makes it much easier for you to take investment. If you aren't planning on doing that, though, then an LLC or S-corp are fine.

From what I can tell, the key to these niche social networking sites (of which yours isn't exclusively one, but sort of is) is to find an existing network of people and replicate it online.

It seems like you've found a great application of this idea... especially if you have loads of potentially sticky customers coming to your site every so often to register for races. I don't use Facebook, but if I had to register for courses through it, I'd probably have an account sooner or later.

I've worked as an analyst for an early-stage VC firm, and at that stage valuation is much more an art than a science. With pre-revenue companies, there are two important questions for the VCs to ask themselves:

1. How much money do they need? 2. How large a percentage of equity do we want?

#1 can be easily determined. #2 needs to be played with a bit, as a good VC firm won't want to take enough equity to demotivate the founders at all, yet still wants to see an attractive return (based very roughly on their own financial projections for your startup).

#1 * 1/#2 = post-money (after investment) valuation

post-money valuation - #1 = pre-money (before investment) valuation

This is, of course, how it works after a firm has decided to make an investment in your startup. Good VCs won't really even bother with pre-revenue company valuations until after they've decided that they want to work with you.