Seconded. I’ve got a late-1980s car, so it doesn’t even have any controls on the steering wheel. But I can do everything by feel alone if I need to.

I pretty much agree... I’ve thought that ‘stick & ball’ atheletes are waaaaaay over paid for a long time now. That said, I’ve also believed that if any atheletes should be paid millions of dollars, it’s racing drivers, given the higher risk of catastrophic injury or death.

Even if that was accurate (and I think it’s not—there’s precious little you can do to an airline in that price range), you’re ignoring a major additional cost—the lost revenue every aircraft would rack up by just being out of service for even just a few days.

Either that, or an automatic system tied to the altimeter. That way you could still have off while on the ground, but if it’s set to kick on automatically wnhen the plane reaches a certain height, you remove the pilot from the equation.

Most of the people I know who have 1980s & earlier M-Bs and use them as daily drivers aren’t anywhere near as stuck-up & pompous as the people who own newer ones. For one thing, it’s pretty much just a labour of love, because the cars just aren’t worth that much. If you’re willing to keep sinking money into a 30…

Same here for my ‘88 DD. My Dad bought it my junior year of high school. When Dad died in 2000, my mom took it over. Around 7-8 years later, her Parkinson’s & dementia had progressed enough she couldn’t drive, so when she ended up in a nursing home, the car came to me, and it’s now my daily driver.

I loathe anything and everything Ferrari. They’e overhyped and ridiculously overpriced for a car that all too often has mediocre build quality. Even more, though, ol’ Enzo was a shitty person who treated most people around him like dirt, and killed a few good drivers in the process. An utterly rephrensible person.

I’m going to share this to my “Mercedes maintenance” fb group, but someone should really spread the word to the LeMons folks....

Say what you will about Buicks, but they do build good, solid cars. My parents had 2 when I was a kid. One was an ‘87 LeSabre that was our road trip car. It went back & forth from Indiana to Florida twice a year. It never gave us any problems (other than a difficult-to-replace headlight) and was very comfortable…

Just watched it again.... I’d say the idiot will get somebody hurt or killed, but he’s already done that.

Karam has been an immature jerk for a while now.... His inability to learn from his mistakes is what cost him his seat in Indycar, and it doesn’t look like he’s improved since then.

Plus, the old Benzes are still being driven, when most Caddies are in the junkyard. I used to always have my back get so sore on on long road trips that I’d have trouble walking.

Sorry, but all I see here is a gigantic pile of crap and poor design. That thing is pretty much the embodiment of everything my (German-born) father hated about American cars. Lots of fancy crap (cushy seats, pointlessly complicated controls, etc.) to cover up a underpowered car that handled like a drunken elephant.

Inspections are well worth the money, particularly if you’re buying expensive & German, but you also hit another important detail with the second car-the more records, the better. It can also be worth it to check with the manufacturer—Mercedes in particular keeps *everything*. If the car was worked on by the dealer,…

“..... and that’s why my family won’t let me watch “Dukes of Hazard” reruns any more....”

Pointlessly overcomplicated. Mercedes-Benz solved this problem a long time ago by simply putting a piece of fabric over the gap, which prevents anything from falling down there in the first place.

Seconded. I have a late ‘80s Mercedes, and it’s a well-known fact that the W124s like nothing better than the basic Bosch plugs that they originally came with.

On a lot of things, I think the trick is to find the happy medium. Even with my bottom-of-the-line trim level Civic, I never went for the *absolute* cheapest option on most things. Usually, for not too much more, there’s a not-quite-as-cheap-but-definitely-better-quality option.

It’d be funnier if there weren’t large amounts of Americans that think the same thing, non-tongue-in-cheek.

Do it in mine and you’ll instantly find yourself a pedestrian.