JDAWG from Cali has $40K-$50K to blow on a new or slightly used (I do believe they call it "pre-enjoyed") sports car. He wants options, so we're going to break it down for him in the grandest Autoblog tradition.

Since we're dealing with the term "sports car," I'm going to assume that practicality is not an issue, so that we can toss any need for four seats or decent storage. I'm also going to go out on a sturdy limb and assume that JDAWG thinks automatic transmissions in sports cars are for total suckers, so we'll limit the discussion to cars whose gearchanging activities require manual input from the driver. If it were my money, I'd be concentrating on the new Porsche Boxster or new Lotus Elise. The new C6 Corvette absolutely offers the best bang for the buck in this price range, but I'm not really crazy about it aesthetically. I'm also a fan of the Honda S2000, which could be obtained for considerably less dough. Might as well throw the BMW Z4 with the 3.0 liter engine, but the style seems polarizing. In the pre-owned realm, a 993 or 996 would do nicely, although maintenance could get expensive in a hurry. A used last-gen Corvette Z06 would be a fabulous buy, but then again JDAWG could just wait for the bigger, bettter C6 Z06.

What I'm getting at: there are many choices. It's a nice problem to have. What do you, the well-informed Autoblog reader, suggest for JDAWG?