[benebob]

Welcome to the board. As for your questions.

1. Slushbox good or bad for autoxing. For an average beginning autoxer the auto (esp some of the subie autos which redline then shift) are gonna post better times than most manuals will. Now as you get better that isn't always gonna be the case and if you then go to a manual at some point you're times will suffer as you aren't really in practice.

2. My wheel bearings are original in my 95. Has been through about 10 autoxs in the last 3 years. Find one that hasn't had nor needed the bearings replaced. It seems from everyone else's experience they post about that once they've been replaced you'll always be replacing them. Of course those who replace 'em and never have another issue tend not to post about it.
3. Mantainance costs.. Depends, parts are pricey, labor tends to be higher too as there isn't a lot of room to work with. If you can do your basic stuff yourself you'll be fine. No more $60 oil changes from the Bimmer dealer.

4. As for price, you get what you pay for. Personally, I'd try to bump it up a bit and get a lower mileage later SVX. Maybe $5-6k. You won't have the initial extra $500 to put into it like most older used cars just to get everything fixed/taken care of.

I'll also add my 2 cents about autoxing it. As has already been brought up. It isn't the most competative car in stock classes. Even less so in your street classes. After autoxing mine for a while I decided to move on to an XT6 for my autoxer for these reasons: Faster or as fast around most courses that don't have huge straight aways then an SVX, Cheap to maintain as parts are in virtually every yard, tires are smaller and cheaper and its in lowly H stock so instead of loosing to national caliber drivers by 2.5 seconds driving the Mini S I'm loosing to the standard mini by 1-1.5 seconds with national drivers.

That said we're currently preparing an SVX for E Prepared autoxing this year. If it isn't competative, at least it will be fun and in the end that is all that matters right?