Agreed. If you want a good looking car that you can drive everyday without it giving you any problems, which is reasonably fast, goes over speed breakers, and doesn't give you 3km/l, then go for an rx8 or 350z.
On the other hand, if you want a pure sports car that you can only drive to races and back home, then it shouldn't matter whether it's clean or not. since you are already looking to swap out the engine, as long as the chassis is fine, you can go for any car that can handle the power that you wanna extract from it.
and if drag races are all you care about, then go for an evo 7.