OK ok ok.... I am looking at this list, and your scope is quite wide here. You have a $17k car up to a $40k....
My pat answer would be the Cobra, but I can see benefits of the Mach1 and GT listed here:
The Mach 1 is quite slick looking with the neat hood, is a revival of an old line (so it could be quite collectable in the future), and performs better than a stock GT (if I understand correctly). It is also 10K less than a Cobra. I don't know how much cost plays into your equasion. Also, I don't know if the Mach1 will have as high an insurance penalty as the Cobra (for High performace vehicles)
The GT is much older, but at the same time, you may feel more "at ease" doing mods and such on it. If you want to tinker on your own or make a lot of mods without worrying about the warranty, this could be a good car to get to play with. Insurance, cost, and performance play here again vs the Cobra, though you are now saving over half the cost of the car.
Don't know anything about the Q400.
On a personal note, I had test-driven a 99 GT convertible and it was nice, but it really didn't grab me as the right car for me. However, when I took the 96 Cobra Converitble out, I just knew that car was for me! In fact, The Toy is my main car now. BTW, my test initial drive top speed was 35 MPH, yet I could tell.
Time to sum up. My final recommendation is to test drive them all! Get a good feel for how they perform. Then, it comes down to the cost to performance ratio, i.e. how much more is that extra perfomance worth to you?
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