Literally not paying attention while driving seems “careless” to me. 

Hey NJM! I have them, they have been fine so far on CS, but I haven’t really needed anything other than forgetting to pay my yearly premium on time the past two years, whoops! Rates are way better than State Farm, so that is all I care about at the moment. 

I guess, but in the pantheon of car sales, 120k units a year is nothing when 15mm new cars a year are sold in the US alone. In looking at sales data, they beat out powerhouses with the like of Jaguar, Land Rover, Infinity and Mitsubishi. Again, nothing they build sells all that well when you look across the industry.…

Yikes, as someone else mentioned, I know it is auto specific. But it just seems to happen more and on a larger scale than other industries. I may have confirmation bias though, but unsure. 

Yea, I agree with that. But I think hanging on to the idea is what some of this is. There are still real factory jobs, but definitely not as many as there once were and more than there will be in the future.

There may be some truth hidden in there, but the difference between slow and fast pumping is probably even less than the one in this story. AKA, not worth my time to worry about it.

Man, I really need to start looking at GX’s again. I saw one on the road today and thought, “hmmm, why did I stop shopping for those?” And now that the new GX/LC is out and the new 4Runner is coming, maybe (lol, I know) the older ones will be a bit cheaper.

Wow, that turned around FAST. Probably doesn’t help that there is a new 4Runner on the way and the LC is back and smaller to fight in the “I want to pretend I offroad” segment.

Yea, I mean, maybe? But I have no idea, $11mm in claims seems like it has been going on for some time now. 

Yea, that is a great point. I also think it is just a hard business to run with a ton of moving parts that can go wrong and a lot of overhead to cover. So, one small mistake or non-payment can really put you behind and you may never catch up. Restaurant business is the same way.

Yea, that makes sense. And with all the work it takes to do some of these, it can’t be very high margin. Once you get someone that flakes on a bill, you are kind of screwed. 

I guess we will see, but it doesn’t look good for them. A no name “brand” selling expensive cars isn’t a recipe for success.

That guy is still alive?

I saw one that I think was even better. The person said that having the pump handle pulled all the way in caused you to get less gas but still make it look like your tank was full. I assume they were talking about the air that gets into the liquid, but as we all know, air doesn’t stay in liquid very long. They…

I know, but it usually starts innocently to some extent. Get stiffed on a resto project then try and make it up on the next but don’t make it all back. Then it starts to snowball. I am sure that is how a lot of fraud starts, not really on purpose, but after some period, it just isn’t reversable. A bit like a gambling…

I guess the problem here is the dollar amounts are usually more significant than some other businesses. Also, with cars, there is so much that can go wrong that leads to losing money on a sale, restoration or parts selling. Maybe it is that I am auto leaning in my job and personal life, but I just seem to see so many…

Yep, that is true.

Yep, and I have a garage that is only for working on stuff, so it wouldn’t be all that terrible. 

I feel like so many of these restoration and tuner companies end up in hot water, it is weird.

I think a lot of it is just posturing and trying to sound good. BUT, there is also the fact that we can’t all have professional jobs in the country and operate. There is also a large amount of people that just can’t do professional type jobs. And I am not being mean here, but when you think about average Itelligence,…