I mean, from far enough away the Hyundai Santa Cruz gives off heavy El Camino vibes.

Earth: *Literally burning to the ground while 10 million people a year die preventable deaths from respiratory issues stemming to a decent extent from transportation-related emissions.*

Ford C-Max: For the guy who wants Dodge Caravan utility on a Kia Forte gas budget.

Late-model Saab owners in the Western Washington area should probably get their radios checked too. 

Your commute is 30 miles of backroads, and you’re doing it in a Gladiator Rubicon. Not a Miata. Not a GTI. Not a...anything else. A Gladiator Rubicon. I think I see the problem. 

Great comment. We often also get good quality and good engineering mixed up, but those two things are very different. You can build a crap design perfectly, and it’s still a crap design. Alternatively, you can do a bad job of screwing together lots of well-engineered components.

Well congratulations on your fortunes looking up this year!

It’s really not.

If you don’t have the space to store winter tires but don’t want to die sliding into a ditch, there’s another way:

I’ll admit my comment was some nerd bait to see if anyone wanted to really get into the cost breakdown of the gas-powered car’s maintenance. I also had no clue a motor replacement ran $20k.

Let’s do some quick math here compared to a thrifty gas-powered taxi vehicle. Say, a Prius.

The average person has no idea how expensive it is to drive, like, anywhere. I’ve seen people skip flights for 24-hour-each-way drives to “save money.”

Counterpoint: how many people do you think ever had unironic Honda CRX posters in their bedrooms?

Sometimes we’re young and dumb and make mistakes. 

I’ve been in two accidents and one bad near-miss. Imagine Dragons was playing all three times.

My first real time driving stick was driving a car I just bought home. It’s kinda hard to royally fuck up so bad that you truly break anything, so it’s all good fun. 

Yep, I flushed mine at 60k and again at 120k. When I was living across the country and took it to a local mechanic for the first time (around 100k miles), he looks at me all bug-eyed and says “please tell me you’ve done at least one transmission fluid change on this thing. People don’t do it, and I keep having to…

I’ll be the first to admit it’s not well-designed, in the sense that these things tend to grenade. But they make cruise control buttery-smooth; when you hit a hill, the CVT just lets RPMs creep up until there’s enough power to the wheels. Much nicer than the banging around gears that I’ve seen even newer Audi…

You know, economists tell us that your automobile should not cost more than half of your annual income. So if you make an income of five thousand dollars, your car shouldn’t cost more than about twenty-five hundred.

Well you’ve successfully identified one of the two problems with Altima ownership (the transmission, although I actually prefer the CVT to commuter-car automatics). The other is the social stigma of owning an Altima (what, didn’t have the credit to finance a Camry instead?).