It feels like this article is incomplete without mentioning the Spec Miata Man Drama page

This isn’t accurate. The 2nd generation explorer, yes the ranger based one, with the 5.0 starting in 1996 was rated to tow 6700lbs in 2WD form, or 6400lbs in AWD form. I can tell you from experience that a 96 Explorer 5.0/AWD couldn’t tow a 6000 pound boat and trailer well, but they were technically rated to do so.

This sounds about right on buying two cars. We did that once, trading in two cars and buying two new cars at the same time. Neither was a bad deal, but neither were any better than we could have gotten individually or on any other day. As to the overall experience, it was only mediocre. We expected a bit better from…

This. Chrysler Financial would probably finance my dog into a new Journey (or a V6 charger). Want to rollover 20K in negative equity from your last five bad new car decisions in about six or seven into a 25k Journey? No problem, I know someone who did it.

I suppose. Maybe they’ve got a buyer lined up, but the value of OEM take offs are so low that it strikes me as hardly worthwhile. Even if they got a few hundred per set (which is what they sell for, not what a reseller would pay for them), that isn’t a huge pile of money that still has to be presumably split between…

1. Scrap copper sells for a several dollars per pound. Cast aluminium sells for around 30-40 cents per pound. It represents the Mendoza line of metals worth recycling.

More like all that work for a few grand, split between however many people. There isn’t much demand for OEM wheels (I did the newer OEM wheels on an older truck thing with a former GMT400 suburban a few years back, and the going rate on craigslist was a couple of hundred dollars for a set of newer Escalade wheels with…

Neutral:

I’m not surprised you had to drive down to Northern NM to get parts. Alamosa is both small and a long ways from much of anything, but you did get to see the Rio Grande gorge.

This isn’t really more than a new variation of an old problem. The tailgate on any truck is liable to hit the jack on the tongue of many a trailer when lowered, especially with the higher belt lines and correspondingly taller tailgates of modern trucks and older trailers.

I’m actually tempted by this for that reason.

... says the team principal working for a team owner that spent two years in prison and paid 75 million in restitution for tax fraud and intimidating witnesses.

This might have something to with the Chinese electric buses turning out to be crap. Like LA, Albuquerque also recently tried BYD electric buses (on a new rapid transit route designed specifically for them) and ended up terminating the contract and returning all the buses after they proved poorly made, unreliable and…

https://oppositelock.kinja.com/ive-bought-a-thing-or-tom-mcparland-was-right-or-tu-1794859011

I would expect this to be a deliberate security measure by a law enforcement and/or intelligence agency for protecting a large, international event (read: high value target for an act of terrorism). This would be done in the same vane as DHS or local agencies deployment of Stingray devices at major events here in the…

The Outback was never, ever cool. That’s not to say it wasn’t very good, because it was, but I was teenager in the 90's. The first generation legacy was a car your grandmother would own. The Outback did spice things up, but only to the extent it became the car bought new by your friend’s dorky dad who still went…

Even if nothing is damaged via curbs or potholes, alignment changes as bushings wear and springs settle. For most folks, putting a car on an alignment rack once every year or two is ample.

Even the fanciest key storage systems I’ve seen at dealers looked like something could be compromised easily enough with a prybar or whatever implement they used to break the tempered glass front door. The less fancy systems would be nothing more than a matter of bumping the lock.

I’d like to think the owner of that wall placed a call to their insurance agent that began with “you’re never going to believe what just happened.”

This. I used a miata as a highway commuter for a couple of years. The longer I owned the car, the less often the top came down. As wonderful as they are in many ways, the top down doesn’t add to the experience. It was only pleasant when the temperature wasn’t too hot or cold, you weren’t going very far and you weren’t …