Don't forget the 4.0 V8 engines that ate their cylinder liners...

No shit, dude. You want something newer? Try a Fit or a Civic. Both are easy and cheap to run, maintain and fix. Point is, there are still (and always have been) popular, affordable cars out there that are easy to maintain.

Right. Fuel for your company vehicles isn't a fixed cost. Uh huh. Whatever, dude. Good luck running a business.

If you have that kind of attitude towards fixed costs, you’re not going to turn the profit you should.

That varies wildly from make to make. 1991-2001 Saturn S series cars are all insanely easy to fix. Parts are cheap, too. Good set of pads, two front rotors, caliper carrier and hardware set totals to just under $100 on rock auto.

Good article. I’d love to have that kind of info. I spec’d my dodge new back in 2005 with the Cummins and 2wd in an effort to combine engine simplicity/durability, fuel economy and large weight capacity with ease of loading and unloading motorcycles into the bed. 11 years later, it’s still a great truck.

Tax deductions are still money you've spent out of pocket, which reduces your profit by more than the value of the deduction.

You'd be wrong. Even if you're only driving 10,000 miles a year, there's a big difference between getting 8 mpg and 16 mpg, especially at 3 bucks a gallon or more.

Removing emissions controls from road going vehicles is a violation of federal law. Publicly documenting doing so on YouTube is incredibly stupid. Fuck these guys, I hope the EPA fines them back into the hole they came from.

Those hood supports are stupid easy to replace and are under $12 each at Rock Auto. BT, DT on lots of 10 year old cars...

Different motors. The 2.2 was derived from the 1983 Chevy 2.0 pushrod engine, while the Pontiac -built Iron Duke started in 1977. Both engines got a lot of updates and incremental improvements over the years.

Yup. I bought my long bed to fit two full size motorcycles in, plus a pair of 8 foot ramps. It’s also hauled hundreds of truckloads of brush, leaves and wood to the county recycling facility and 40 four by 8 sheets of drywall at a time when I was remodeling my building.

I had a 1992 S-10 2wd with the 2.8/5speed. Got it for free with 212,000 miles on it, sold it for $500 with 278,000 miles, that owner scrapped it at 331,000 miles when it needed too much work to pass inspection. Original engine and trans, never opened up.

The 2.2 isn’t an Iron Duke, that’s the 2.5.

That sounds odd. In NJ, CA, PA and many other states, you pay the sales tax (or a similar “use tax”) where you register the car initially, regardless of which state you bought it in. Are NV and Utah different?

No, *your* 8 year old Honda is as reliable as early 90s GM. I've serviced a ton of Hondas since 1994 and outside of the V6 auto trans issues and the engine issues in that one generation of civics, the vast majority of those cars have proven to be very reliable. My Fit has been virtually trouble free for the 60k I've…

Yup. My 84 year old mom got her first automatic last year - after driving stick-only for the last 50+ years) when they replaced a Mazda 3 with a Sonic turbo hatchback (no CVT, yay!).

Wrong. That bridge is busy all day, there’s hundreds of people (at minimum) behind those idiots.

Not nearly limited enough. Ugh

I dunno, the kind of customer who buys these new generally has lots of cash and owns a lot of expensive toys.