The wealth gap has grown by leaps and bounds with COVID - anyone who can afford a new car at all is generally able to spend whatever they feel like. The middle class is pretty much gone and so selling reasonably priced new cars is futile.

I am always troubled by people saying “an expensive price” (a thing can be expensive, or a price can be high) but this seems to have become accepted practice by now. I need to read a New Yorker now to soothe my soul.

So if you had only spent the extra $50K on a loaded F-150 you would have totally saved yourself 9 trips to the mulch dispensary! Who’s laughing now, huh???

I will be quoting you.

It’s hilarious how long this conversation has carried on with half the commentators thinking about, say, a 6% loan and the other half are discussing a 0% loan. Ford does not offer a 0%, 84-month loan, and certainly never did to anyone without a gold plated credit score.

Aside from your punctuation and capitalization, I agree 100% with everything you say.

I got to look at the one that was for sale here in NY (consignment, no one wanted to pay the asking price though). I took the photo of the cockpit that is in the WP article. A most exciting day.

I am going to theorize that these Camrys and Altimas and Corollas are all being turned into Ubers or into parts for Ubers. Most Ubers look recently repainted to me, and there are hundreds of shabby-looking shops that specialize in doing work for car service “contractors”.

You just have to find a Want that you can afford. Hence my brother’s love of bicycles - he can afford several precious jewel of a bike (while driving a $2.5K rustbucket Mini Cooper S). I have a kei car, which cost me less than $5K but makes me giggle like a little kid every time I lay eyes on it.

I drive a 28-year-old kei car... most things last if maintained, although the parts supply is complicating matters.

Black has traditionally been the political color of choice for fascists. Blue is for royalists, red for lefties, green for enviros, yellow for liberals (usually).

But then the transmission pan would have had three rustholes rather than one.

Nah, I don’t want my phone and my car to be linked. Heated seats just make me feel like I peed my pants, but my wife likes them so maybe.

People think they want it while they’re in the showroom and so they buy cars equipped with this nonsense.

I don’t have one, but a reverse camera is pretty nice and will definitely be used by most people. And a USB charger thingy so that I can plug in my phone, because I do not like Bluetooth.

They already are; countless anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers in ICUs.

I am not sure what things are like for shows and movies, but if there are both British and American translations of a foreign-language book then get the British one. The American translation is almost always dumbed down, nuance removed. The lack of respect for the reader is often palpable.

I was once riding in a car after dinner with my friend “Amber”, in the small Rocky Mountain town developed in part by her family. There’s a street in this town with her last name on it.

This being Texas, some of the cyclists must also own trucks. It would probably help (public opinion-wise) to have a picture in a local newspaper of one of the bandaged cyclists standing next to their pickup truck. Unless it’s a Honda Ridgeline, of course.

I think Eric is suggesting that LG is taking more of the blame than they should, making GM look better since they’re the public-facing company in this situation. But maybe I am reading too much between the lines.