Ignorant non-western living person here but aren’t desert salt flats easy to damage and hard to repair? 

Having worked in a GM dealership through the last strike, I can tell you strikes REALLY put us and our customers in a huge bind. I get that this is kind of the point (to put pressure on GM)  but it’s a massive PITA. I just hope it doesn’t drag on like the last one.

Financially: keeping financing to a minimum, buying what we can afford and paying extra on premium to pay off sooner.

Going to hell for this being the first thing I thought of:

This. It was widely known that he played shell games with vehicles and routinely wore disguises. Unfortunately, there is a high likelihood that whatever report comes from Russia can’t be trusted. Even a faked death with the assistance of Russia can not be ruled out.

Obviously they need to educate themselves:

It’s very much a tightrope walk and I understand how hard it is. Customers are usually the ones who struggle to wrap their head around how monumental of a task something like that can be. And to be fair, it’s not really their job to understand...they paid for a product and it’s reasonable to expect that product to…

I can tell you this is not an isolated issue. It’s incredibly unfortunate but it’s part of owning a new(er) car these days. Customers are essentially paying to be beta testers for new technology. Off the top of my head, I can think of 3 or 4 service bulletins we see often for Cadillacs that end with “Engineering is…

F1 is such a paradox. One one side, we want to see incredible drivers and “once in a lifetime” talents take the field. We want engineers/teams to be innovative in their attempts to one up the others.

Guess James Cameron shouldn’t have made Titanic. Inspired by an event where loss of life occurred but the story line is patently fictitious. It’s Hollywood....go outside and touch some grass.

Nothing personal taken...I know dealerships have a well earned reputation. I came out of the shop as a car enthusiast and a technician with a heavy distrust for sales departments. I spent a lot of time and energy keeping sales managers from being their own worst enemies. Like I said, they didn’t always get it…

My mother died from an alcohol induced black-out while in a parked car that over-heated with her in it (Florida in July...tomorrow to be exact). She was an alcoholic before Covid but it really took off once Covid hit.

Been managing auto repair for 13 years now and in the field for nearly 20. The cost of repairs is up across the board for pretty much any reason you can dream up.

Our dealership chain does inspections/repairs on all retail units save for the low budget “tax season” cars. I ran the dept. for 8 years. We were very thorough. I can’t sales sales managers fixed everything every time but they did better than most, I think.

I would like to see Merc make a run at challenging RB before the regulations get shuffled if, for no other reason than to see HAM and VER duke it out again in comparable machinery.

PS4 all the things.

How to make a bunch of money:

I’m a bit on the ginger side so this is quite OP.

Drinking.

Not really infuriating but when I was 12, I was flying by myself (escorted minor) which means the airline took you to your gate, got you on the plane, etc.