No doubt. I work in a very large corporation that has a long-held cultural quirk about fancy cars. Being in sales it’s not cool to drive something really nice. For example one of my coworkers did the whole go-to-Germany-and-get-your-new-BMW thing. He got a modest 3-series convertible. After that he got endless shit…

Ha! Mine’s a Dinan (courtesy former owner with more money than I do) as well. I hear you on the unplanned maintenance. My M5 was a regular traveler on whatever flatbed was closeby for the first couple of years but I’ve fixed most of the things that go South (e.g. fuel pump).

Unless there is damage to the actual bumper parts, a cracked bumper — actually just the bumper cover — should be around $800 to replace...about $500 for the bumper cover itself and the rest for labor and paint. For reasons I’ll spare the reader I’ve had my front bumper replaced twice. Not that they are particularly…

I was going to answer this but you said it so much better. And you’re right about the $30K mark. After taking shit from my manager I asked her what she thought my car was worth. “At least forty thousand, maybe more” she replied. Ha ha. I told her that her ten year old Acura TL was worth more but I don’t think she…

2000 M5 owner here.

As a child, I was in an accident A) before seatbelts and B) as a front-seat passenger in a car with a metal dashboard. This was in the early 1960’s and I can still close my eyes and see that dashboard coming up to smack me in the face. Imagine getting hit in the face by a frying pan that’s on the end of a baseball…

Not knowing when to go to a professional. There are certain things that just get me straight to a professional mechanic. For example, anything to do with the exhaust manifold. Nothing under the hood leads to more tears than a set of rusted, semi-dissolved exhaust manifold bolts.

Don’t go to the dealer to get your BMW’s headlights aligned. It took me $1,800 to get out the door after they found all kinds of “we can’t possibly let this car go out the door with x” stuff and the dealer wanted to replace all the brake pads and rotors for another $2,600. Honestly, the rear rotors needed to be…

And that 14 year old will be far less likely to take me out on I-40 if they make a mistake. Nice try, though.

They’re both machine learning systems. The IBM system (Watson) is text-based and learns by searching huge amounts of data from all kinds of sources such as medical journals, Wikipedia, etc.. It was trained to play Jeopordy. Now it’s being trained for other tasks.

Just wait until they build this into a dashcam or a HUD. “Siri, I’d like to take a trip...”

Where was her other hand? Just askin....

Wait, what? Piss Christ memorabilia?

What year? Rangers were (IMHO) “right sized” for entry level trucks and were sturdy as all heck. When he was in high school, my son and a friend bought one for $100 and just beat the tar out of it off-road...used the transmission as a skid plate, tore the doors off (trees!) etc. It took them two weeks to finally kill…

As to the rear-view vision I should have been more specific so apologies there...yes, pickups have wonderful outward vision if you’re on the open road. They aren’t worth squat in a parking lot and are almost impossible to parallel park. I don’t think pickups are bad (they are sturdy and reliable) I just don’t think…

How about the “creepy uncle” decor?

> half-ton pickup.

1995 Acura Integra GSR.

I’d be down. But I’d never buy one, because Ford will throw a $75k sticker on it. Nothx.

IIRC that is a wheel tethering cable. In there to do what you see here and keep the wheel from flying away and hitting another car or a spectator. Part of the IndyCar spec since 1999 but someone with more knowledge may be able to shed some light on this.