Buying from Canada is more like buying from your neighbor than someone that lives the next state over. 

That’s about right. The dealer taking the trade in has a guy that assesses whether they can make money off it. If they can’t make money, or they don’t have room, it goes to auction. Sometimes they’ll also go by default if they’ve sat on the lot for too long, typically 90 days. 

Then why not spend a couple grand more and get one that didn’t have ~$15k of accident repair done to it? 

It has a salvage title.

Would someone like Carmax even touch a car with a salvage title?

Painting the top section black mostly hides the “uniqueness”.

Until proven otherwise. 

One of the first casualties would be the trade-in value of anything with a somewhat current recall campaign on it.

In specific order:

Oh sweet baby Jesus. If they can get into an S2000 then they shouldn’t even consider anything else.

Write off the idea for this year and aim for 2020.

My local, barely professional, baseball team plays in a league nobody can identify, yet regularly averages 7000 people a game (annually). It’s because it’s cheap. The food and drinks are a bit on the high side, but not as much as going to an NHL game. 

Unless things are different in the US, private sports team’s arenas, ballparks, stadiums and anything else are NOT public property.

I agree. Mostly.

“Ride sharing” is going to pivot into a new iteration of taxis and the cost will probably end up being about the same.

In the owners manual, there should be reset instructions. 

For sure it isn’t feasible. As a once a week gig the abuse on your car would be minimal. But few realize how much doing it every day beats the crap out of your car. And your wallet.

That seems to be the consensus around here. 

It’s probably still roughly the same size as a Pilot. And those are not small.