If he goes $6500, do it. The car is not worth $8K, and I for one try to buy a car with as little mods as possible. If you want it, buy it. Just don't pay too much.
Personally, I would just skip it all together and find a babied bone stock low mileage one. It takes some searching but they're out there. It took me 3 months to find mine, it took ALOT of willpower, but I'm glad I didn't settle for anything else.
If your are completely confident in the guy's competence and that he didn't run the car too hard and the body is perfect and paint is polishable, you could probably go for $6000 with the assumption that you will spend $1000 fixing it for the next couple of years. ALWAYS assume the worst man, better safe than sorry. SO many people buy cars then sell them the second something goes wrong with it becuase they either A) Can't afford to fix it or B) They expect it to be perfect for some reason and get frustrated emmediatly.
But I would lean toward buying it if you could get about that for your 96. If it's gonna cost you to buy it, maybe just consider the performance mods you could do to the 96 for that cost. If this car really is in good shape and has no problems, you would be trhilled with it compared to that 96, that's for sure.
An engine swap is probably more than $5000. Plus, most of what i care about can be transferred: hood, rims, spoiler. White face gauges and the billet stuff are easy to install. The other car already has gears, exhaust, cai, good stereo, and a new top. So it's really just the pulleys and timing adjuster, like $400. Selling the custom hood and wing should cover that.
sorry, i meant that the white gauge faces are not expensive and i can install them easily enough myself. i wasn't planning on moving it from the 96 to the 95.