Ok so let me know if this plan makes sense or if it's just completely retarded.
If all goes well in my job search I should be working full time by Summer 2012 and can start looking at cars in the fall/winter, let's assume a purchase time of January 2013. Now the end goal for me is to buy a GT-R like 3 years later, say January 2016. I can either keep the Z in that time or buy another car.
Option 1: Sell the Z in January 2016, when it will be ~7 yrs old and with estimated 100k miles. I'm assuming I drive around 15k miles per year. I could then sell it for around $10-12k (based in 2004-2005 350Z prices). This would give me a $10-12k down payment on the GT-R.
Option 2: Sell the Z January 2013 for around $20-22k and buy a new car for $35k. So I would spend like $10-15k extra on the new car. Then I could sell that car in 2016 at 3 yrs old and 45k miles for around $20-25k. Subtract from that the money I lost from buying the new car and I have like $10-15k to spend on the GT-R.
Damn I didn't expect those numbers to come out the same. Of course I know this is a really rough estimate and their are too many factors involved to predict this accurately. Does the logic somewhat make sense it am I embracing my inner ImportConvert a little too much?