No penalty to you but the dealer may not get their end of the deal if you pay off early. The VW dealer I financed through asked me to make 4 payments and suggested I just make a giant payment right away so no interest accrued.  

Buddy had an R5 Turbo 2 with a claimed 230hp. It required a 50/50 mix of premium and CAM2. It ran about as you would expect of a little pushrod (!) ‘80s 1.4L boosted to the moon. Nothing, nothing, nothing yet ... nothing... WHEEEEEEE! It made my Esprit S4s (which couldn’t accelerate off idle up my steep driveway) feel…

Hah. I remember my racing buddy having a bit of a back up at a track somewhere and getting his hands on some chocolate flavored ExLax, which scarfed down like candy, not bothering to read the packaging.  “Wow, these aren’t so bad”. Later, it was bad. LOL

Paraphrasing a Bob Lutz quote about Tesla: “Everyone thinks automakers are idiots until they try to build a car themselves”. 

I worked at a quick oil change place in the late 80s and we all noticed that, no matter how beat to sh*t, every Honda that rolled in ran great.

Check AutoTrader in your area. Be seated.

You can possibly order such a car for delivery sometime in the future but chevy.com shows FIFTEEN ‘21/’22 Sparks for sale in the entire country. If you want a Spark now (I don’t judge) the cheapest one on AutoTrader within 25 miles of me is a ‘14 with 98k and a $11,990 ask.  EDIT: Which I now see is 1/2 the price of…

Out in my little part of NJ, I’m having the opposite problem. 3 flakes in the forecast? Salt that b*tch! Wanted to sneak in a quick motorcycle ride on Friday but they beat me to it.

Your comment made me think about it - I probably have 10 different oil filter remover tools. Not counting screwdrivers.

You were talking about the BMW engine that is installed in modern MINIs. You’re not waiting around for a turbo to spool up at low rpm (sure, if I data logged it, I’d see a delay but you don’t feel it). It’s really impressive how it pulls out of the basement.

That’s not how the 2.0 MINIs (BMW B48 engine) drive. Valvetrain has variable lift and timing, 11:1 compression, and the turbo is basically integrated into the exhaust manifold. There’s no waiting for anything. They feel like a bigger motor and pull from just off idle. They do run out of breath early.

I find my wife’s 2.0 ‘19 MINI to be torquey at ridiculously low RPM. She often skip shifts 2nd to 4th around down and it happily pulls away. My over-turbo’d VW (Golf R turbo on a 1.8T), OTOH, is just barely alive at 2500rpm.

Yes, of course, but with some unlucky timing, “long term” can be pretty damn long and comments like the one I responded to always cite recent results. I always wonder what the commenter would have been posting in Mid 2008. “That $17,000 I didn’t put in my car is now worth $10,000!” Come 2013, “That $17,000 I didn’t…

I didn’t realize Lightspeed continues to be its own company. I thought it was a name owned by American Bicycle Group, suffering the same fate as Merlin (my beloved ‘94 Merlin Mountain frame hangs behind my trainer - I have no interest in riding a 26" bike but my daughter will have to throw it out when I die). In the…

We’re in a 13 year bull market, and that skews perceptions of risk.

I get it, I just see “new Panigale V2 out the door price gets me the poverty spec version”. Substitute as your preferences dictate.  Which reminds me, it’s been hours since I checked Facebook Marketplace for local 899 Panigales.

I realize it’s all relative but ‘just’ is not the first word that comes to mind to park in front of $19,000 when discussing a motorcycle.

Oh, how I would love to have that storage unit! 6 cars? Long term car storage around here (well, 45 minutes away) starts at $200mo with lots of access restrictions (frequency, notification rules, etc).

Going to the other extreme, 6kwh supplying 80hp is depleted in ... SIX minutes.  

• Sugar pop selling more seems absolutely strange as Diet Coke is always the first empty shelf at groceries.