It’s also rapidly approaching the age where all the plastic and rubber parts start failing and it needs an entirely new suspension and basically every engine bay hose, tube, and gasket. The valve cover gasket already went, so it’s definitely begun. I’ve got an E46 in my garage I’ve owned since it was only five years…

$35k? Maybe for two or three of these.

I used to know a guy who drove a Boxster year round in Central NY. He bought good snow tires and did just fine. After he put like 200k on the Porsche, he replaced it with an E92 M3. Did the same thing. He said it drove fine in the winter with snow tires, but the car itself was persnickety, so he bought a used Subaru…

I ordered an Xbox Series X right from Microsoft a couple months ago. It was relatively painless. It supposedly would have shown up in two days too if not for the shipping snafu caused by the extreme weather that rolled through as soon as my shipment was readied.

I’m still trying to figure out the part where he got scammed *many different times* and didn’t catch on. I mean, the first time was off by a factor of four! That alone should have been a red flag at least. Then they keep screwing up time after time and you keep going back? Bruh.

I freely admit that the one I had was from a period where most cars were trash and the Germans did complicated and fragile like it was their jobs. Cars now are far more reliable pretty much across the board. By comparison, though, Hondas and Toyotas are reliable like stonework compared to anything Germany ever made.

I owned a 1999.5 Audi A4 Avant quattro, which is roughly twice as reliable as an RS6 could be. I was able to put only 11k on it over five years and spent more time underneath it or in the engine bay than I did in the cab.

Considering that Ford still hasn’t figured out how to fix it and probably won’t at this rate, sounds like the only good one is one with a stick.

I haven’t! The things makes something like 100hp more than the minivan I had, and that felt adequate. It’s probably brisk! As long as you don’t need to turn, anyway.

I love that assertion. I drove the Focus with a DCT my sister had (and since dumped for obvious reasons) a few times. Shuddering violently during shifts? Slipping in first and then slamming into second while taking off on a gentle incline? Backing into a driveway over a slightly raised sidewalk and having the…

Personally, I’ve been able to find some driving joy in just about anything. I even found some in my dearly departed Grand Caravan. I would hope an Odyssey is better than that was.

If the E39 jack is anything like the E46 jack, you don’t want it anyway. They call it “widowmaker.”

I had the distinct pleasure of driving a friend’s near-enough-to-British-Racing-Green-as-doesn’t-matter over cream NA Miata at one point. So, yes. They did.

Minivans are versatile as hell. Man do they suck to drive — a wise man once described as “like drowning in wallpaper paste” — but they’re just so damned handy.

If you’ve got a tailwind, sure.

I don’t want to recommend it because it’s so ugly that songs might be sung about it, but I road tripped in a rented Ford Flex a few years ago. It did the job almost as well as a minivan but didn’t suck quite as much ass. It was an EcoBoost one, so it could even get out of its own way.

Oh, you’re definitely right. I just appreciate the irony in the fact that in those car chases, one of the parties could simply get out and continue on foot and the chase wouldn’t much change...

Oh, I agree that it’s a necessity for the same reasons you do. Really, what I meant was that many people have a general situational awareness problem and they could do to actually pay attention to what’s going on around them. The first thing that comes to mind is somebody absorbed in their phone as they cross the…

That’s both a really weird thing to want to specialize in and surprising that there’d be enough of them to support a shop.

Hey, you’re not wrong. Remember that our zeitgeist contains the idea that people being reduced to a chunky spray of entrails is A-OK but a female nipple is the end of the goddamned world.