Finding an "actually good" one can be challenging too. Nothing's as frustrating as importing a mint-looking 40,000km car which has never had its oil changed in 15 years.

This is... not surprising. I had a 2008 Smart Fortwo as a company car for a year or so (loved it!) and currently have a 2012 iQ. The iQ is like a Smart, minus the charm that the Smart has. It's fairly miserable to drive, and it was horrendously overpriced, new. They cost considerably more than a Fiat 500 does, and…

Hah! Well, thank you - I'll pass that on to Korey. He's the one who painted, wet-sanded and polished them. I work for a very large customer of the body shop which was next door to Intermeccanica - the body shop gave me a key to the shop and I could use a bay whenever I needed for whatever purpose. Intermeccanica would…

I used to work right next door to these guys: http://www.intermeccanica.com/ and all I can say is yes, they're absolutely daily-drivable. The convertible tops were finicky, but they were easy to work on and had a lot of neat modern touches — like the "original Porsche radio" replica had a line-input tucked away so you…

That's a 2008-2009.

nope, they just break the starter circuit with a relay, controlled by the GPS unit.

You just need to do your homework. The shop I work for rebuilds cars when they're slow. All of them are older models which were purchased with very little damage, and were ultra easy to fix. The latest one is a 2002 Blazer. Bought it for $400, towed it to the shop for about $120. It needed a hood, driver's side front…

We buy a ton of cars for the fleet at work, and have to disassemble them a fair bit to install our fleet management units. It's all done in-house. We really like the 500 as a car, but it's shocking to see just how many assembly problems they have. Stripped fasteners are common, radio bezels frequently do not line up…

Is it possible that somebody in flight line maintenance at O'Hare said "Get that part to us RIGHT NOW. I don't care what is involved, and I don't care what it costs. RIGHT NOW!" -and this guy was standing next to the part, with a 172 parked outside?

Four is quite a small number. Commercial airlines typically have flight-line mechanics stationed at their common airports just for this sort of thing - when you see "delayed" for a flight, there is a reasonable chance that they're working on a snag. It doesn't necessarily mean that the plane is unsafe, but often…

RSX. I have one as a daily. It's fun enough, good on fuel, ultra practical, super reliable and pretty comfortable. Easily found for under $5k in great shape.

If he's smart, he won't fix it — but will sell it as-is to a rebuilder. Typically a rebuilder will be extremely well affiliated (will own) a "buy now pay later, bad credit or no credit" dealership and also an auto wrecking yard. They'll pay pretty good money for this sort of thing because it has no declaration because…

Rare? Really? I see 5-6 a day in Vancouver - they're downright common. There were more GT-Rs (ten? eleven?) at the last Importfest than there were 370Zs.

Ugh, this is so accurate that it's painful. It's SPECIFICALLY affluent white married folk who buy these things, over the age of "we retired and now we're going to travel across America!". Anybody and everybody else realized what a stupid idea that is and can be found in a good hotel, with return flight tickets, often…

I was recently in Seattle and was surprised how few Fortwos I saw! They're quite prolific in Vancouver - I'm looking out of the window of a sandwich shop right now and can spot one 1st gen (the diesel ones) and two 2nd gens. Common sights. They're fun to drive in the city - used to have one as a company car and rather…

Realy? I mean, it is the cheapest, but it's also by far the worst to drive. It has a terrible turning radius, while the Sienna and Odyssey are quite sharp. It's the poorest handling, has the worst seats and the weakest brakes - and the throttle in the 2011+ is really touchy. I've driven all three, and would spend the…

It's a fact that it happens in every industry. Engineers _always_ need to make compromises. Sometimes for function, sometimes for cost, sometimes for other factors.

Only in the USA will this be seen as a reasonable purchase to make. IT'S TOO FUCKING BIG!

Europeans never seem to keep cars for long enough for long-term reliability to actually mean anything to them though. By the time a car is ten years old, they deem it as scrap. Ten years old is only seen as half away a through in North America, so when that '03 Golf breaks down, we give VW a black flag.

Funny actually - I'm really really glad they're going to use those here in Vancouver. The Taurus is _extremely_ rare here. You can go a few weeks without seeing them, and usually when you do, it has Washington plates on it. So they'll be very obvious like the Crown Vic is now. Charger isn't common either.