Yep, white trash. Welcome to Illinois

Factory tint I would think is usually 25% or more VLT on the rear windows. Anything on the front doors is almost always something the dealer does.

“Yep it’s factory tint”

They won’t be replaced. You keep yours. You want different ones? At that point you will receive universal plates. Yes, it is hard for law enforcement, sometimes the plate has to be called in. I have specialty plates and an officer told me she gave up on trying to look up my plate one day. If you saw the plate…

3.6? A buddy of mine bought a used CTS for 12k and a year later spent 7k on a new engine installed at the dealer. 2 years after that he spent another 4k on engine work.

Premium as in exotic cars? Because any ‘premium’ car factory audio system from 1998-2013 meant any combination of the following, none of which strike me as fantastic.

In Illinois I just look at the plates. The patrol vehicles have State, Sheriff, or Municipal law enforcement plates. Detective and undercover vehicles often do have “passenger” plates.

Back when I had an HP laptop that gave me plenty of issues, I used their online chat a lot. For awhile, the chat form asked what my support/expertise level was. Something like:

Why are we not figuring out why consumer routers need to be rebooted? We’re talking about $70 gateways designed for an era of chat rooms and Shockwave Flash being used now for simultaneous HD video streams, 500MB a day in mobile and desktop updates, apps that constantly sync in the background. No, it doesn’t seem like…

Just take my damn license, I shouldn’t drive!

I had a 2003 Monte Carlo SS (I know, I know..) and those housings looked brand-new after more than 10 years and 200,000 miles. 2006 Corolla now has about 350,000 miles (odo stopped at 299,999) and its headlight housings were as clear as swamp water until about 2008.

Urgh, I understand your frustration. Very sharp-looking pickup you have, though.

Ha... one of the guys in my town drives around with HIDs in their low-beam and fog light reflector housings. Also keeps his 32" light bar on at all times. Obnoxious exhaust, faulty CHMSL, tinted windows, the whole 9 yards to audition the pickup for a spot in the next hip-hop country music video. What does he get…

That’s usually how you can tell who probably couldn’t afford many options, but still wanted the brand. Cadillac did that for awhile, too. One of the managers I work with bought a base model CTS for the same price as the mid-level A4 another coworker bought. Without prejudice, which one probably looks wealthier?

Herp Derp UltraBryteXenonOutlet2016 sells an HID retrofit kit for my 2003 Corolla, for only $30! Nevermind that I have reflector housings that are cloudy, faded, dull, and hazy!

I hope you only use that when oncoming traffic isn’t present. I accidentally left my light bar on in daylight and had people flipping me off and honking the whole time.

The testing they perform includes making sure headlights don’t blind other drivers, and most retrofit kits don’t have anti-glare mechanisms for reflector housings (as opposed to projector lenses). If you look at a Volvo with factory HID bulbs in a reflector housing, you’ll find that those bulbs are slightly different…

Maybe I’ve been over on Gizmodo too much lately, but let’s count how many times Tim Cook describes something as “the best so far,” as if they’re engineering things to be worse than the old model. Then again, they are the only company that gets hype over a phone over 2 years old released as ‘new’ because of hardware…

Cadillac and Pontiac didn’t badge that guy.. you named 5 of the others though.

I have a 1-ton pickup truck for work that hauls 18ft trailers at most, and I do MAJOR pre-trip and post-trip records (can’t stress post-trip enough, the next guy to drive it might not do a pre-trip). Not to mention that class D vehicles in Illinois have mandatory safety lane inspections twice a year.