what new car out there can get 40mpg combined for $20k that has better utility than this? I don’t think there are any. 

How can a dealer charge this to an owner who has no intention of buying out the lease?  I can sort of see the benefit if the owner does buy out the lease because doesn’t this mean the owner is basically paying $2500 for a factory CPO warranty, however good that is?  Plus a potential better interest rate for the loan…

Fine. No problem. middle class is defined by the Pew Research Center as 2/3 to double the median income so ~45k to ~135k in 90026. I guess SF bay area has much higher income. In the SF suburbs where I live, middle class goes up to about $200-250k. My guess is the owners of those homes have higher incomes than $135k…

This is probably TMI so feel free to gloss over. I purposely stayed away from 996s because I wanted more power and prettier looks, but if I bought one, it would get a LN upgrade right away, and that’s $2k-ish insurance. an estimated 8% of 996s had IMS issues and that’s a lot. 997s don’t have as many problems with IMS,…

haha, we’re probably neighbors...

middle class in LA and SF probably have a household income around $250k but still spending 40% of income on housing and property taxes.  it is what it is.

In CA, a $1.5M house is just firmly middle class. That isn’t a mansion, it’s a small tract home in LA.

automatics go great with convertibles. not even from a performance standpoint. Just from the cruising standpoint because why buy a convertible if not to enjoy the air and scenery and to be seen in it?

eh, my 16 year old 911 has 95k miles and still runs like a top. almost 100hp/L if that qualifies as high strung.  i also owned two 200k mile E30 M3s that were running fine when I sold them.  just needs care.  and money.

This is an easy experiment: allow manufacturers to run their own dealers. Only sell at MSRP, no discounts, no haggling, no markups, no incentives. People can choose who to buy from. If they can haggle a better price at an independent, go for it. If they’re willing to buy from the manufacturer direct, pay more, but…

maybe so. with my wife’s C300, the alarm bells are so loud and obnoxious that you wouldn’t want to drive it without the key.  But it certainly wouldn’t just shut down because that would be very dangerous to lose power brakes and steering in a car in motion.

it won’t shut off but alarm bells would be going off and that would be annoying.

You really did. I was totally kidding bro.  My corolla is my beater car.

Hyundai Equus would have to be on the list of bang for the buck.  Those looked pretty expensive and were pretty luxurious for the time.

I mean if you’re going used, it’s hard to beat a mid 2000s S class for $5k. If you want something that’s going to run for a while without exploding your wallet, that’s a different story.

why you got to hate on corollas?  (I have an 05.)

I get what you’re saying - the reality is that for more than 95% of use cases, Tesla and others have plenty of range but people put stock into range anxiety based on what they MIGHT need their car for. It’s a reality distortion field. I actually live in the SF Bay Area which is arguably the epicenter for EV car…

When someone else figures out how to build out a network as strong as Supercharger in terms of numbers/locations/reliability/software, Tesla will start to have a hard time. There are already L2 systems that are about to overtake Autopilot. But Supercharger is really the silver bullet that tilts everything into Tesla’s…

Here’s a question- how do we attribute asshole fueled unruliness vs alcohol or drug fueled unruliness? do we allow for appeals for unexpected interactions of prescriptions and alcohol? Is it one and done or one or two strikes before you get on the no fly list? Once you put some sort of human evaluation into it, it’s…

I’m still a fan of doing both since each by itself is not 100% effective at preventing infection but in combination, are better than either alone. And I don’t want to have to deal with COVID. I don’t want to feel sick, risk death, and I don’t want to have to isolate from my family.