Before the pandemic and even now to some extent, old 10 and 12-speed road bikes everyone likes to mock for being heavy and ancient are perfectly serviceable and repairable riders that can be had for free or around the same price as a box store POS. Sure, they’re not as “cool” as some fake suspension mountain bike or…

You’re talking kid bikes, but this problem is much more pronounced with adult bikes.

I did the same thing as a kid, but I’m no longer a kid and the point here is that this junk is not repairable. This isn’t just disposable kid bikes that get outgrown in a summer, anyway, there are a lot of bikes in adult sizes. The newer crop of trash uses plastic where even a cheap POS should be metal. There are…

Or the mfgs could just make their subscriptions free to licensed techs. Keep the security and the issue of danger to customers (which is just their propaganda BS) goes away.

The problem is: if it doesn’t go up, you’re stuck with it. In the unlikely event that it does, how long would that take? IMO, you only buy a car as a possible investment if you don’t mind getting stuck with it if it doesn’t go up. This thing is a novelty—drive it once for a laugh and that’s it. Bring it to Radwood…

We had the non turbo auto when I was a kid. Engine blew around 80k. It was a rattly POS. Even if just for some stupid Radwood nostalgia-disease fest, you’re wasting a garage bay on this stupid thing and spending the same or more as a contemporary car that doesn’t suck so much or simply buying a much better, modern…

That was what came to my mind, too. What, he go home to borrow a knife?

They’re very lightweight, so they can support a lot of them—they’d need 18 more Shillings just to get to a pound.

Wouldn’t the captain have now made himself a criminal, something like aiding and abetting?

Yeah, if you can’t be trusted to determine that an empty road is empty, you shouldn’t be trusted to drive at all, but I guess that gets back to low license standards.

I’m inclined to believe that it is a flag pole with illumination lights. An old POS limo that got drunked into a creek would not be surprising to have been sporting a trump/blue line/Gadsden flag on it and the degenerate owner would be stupid enough to want the wretched, apparently twisted wreck back instead of…

I didn’t mean to advocate buying bottom-barrel junk. Things like this Versa are joyless and terrible to drive—they’re a torture every day even if they’re not giving problems and there’s a non-monetary cost in that which I don’t think is trivial. Stepping up even to a compact is a much nicer proposition for not much…

For me, the differences here are that all but the most OTT appliances are a lot cheaper than new cars and you expect to pay less for the appliance you don’t care about, but base compact and subcompacts aren’t what most of the appliance buyers are buying—they’re buying CUVs like RAV4s that are already marked up a little…

I fully understand why people buy the boring do-everything-moderately-well-and-not-have-to-think-about-it vehicle, but what I don’t get is how much they pay for them! A lot of those things aren’t all that cheap and they often load the shit out of them with options. If they don’t care, why waste more money than…

I like cheap and basic, but these were real penalty boxes. Safety and lack of age-related reliability issues are about the only thing they have over any number of decent ‘80s Japanese economy cars with a huge deficiency in feel and character and maybe even a bit of quality feel in exchange (depending on make and model)…

I fully support the aero mods and interest in efficiency, but drive a speed that’s reasonably similar to those around you, FFS.

To them, this is their hooning.

What I read is: there are way too many junkies and not enough competent mechanics.

No thanks. Subaru died for me with the discontinuation of the 2.2. Never had a single issue with the windows inmy 270k Legacy or my GLs—scissor regulators were far more robust and reliable than the cable system used by a lot of other OEMs. A little wind noise, but a small length of 1/4” hose between the…

Yeah, this doesn’t seem intended for cross-country travel, but in an area with actual stuff to do and see, say near NH, 100 miles easily gets you to a lot of different places, from ocean to lake to river to mountains to forest to weird theme parks to historic sites to events to culture.