I looked over the pics he had posted on neons.org and i noted that it’s got the less desirable and harder to get into kirk style cage instead of the through-the-dash skytek ones that the challenge cars had, and it’s could use some paint and bodywork eventually. But cosmetics aside it should be a solid car for what you’d want to do with it. The '95 motor has a better intake than the later years, and they’re less fussy about emissions equipment.
There’s always stories like this one. Not really relevant to a racecar IMO. My parents have a 00 and an 02 and they haven’t had any of the problems G3ARH3AD describes. I’m not saying that there aren’t bad neons out there, there’s bad examples of every car.