I have two great devices guaranteed to save you tons of fuel:

Was your grey-market car a bimmer? my greymarket e30 323i hasn't been an issue to own whatsoever and BMW and parts supplier sites make the parts very readily available. Hell, it even passes TX taipipe emissions.

These engines are actually extremely reliable and low maintenance, plus the m90 (not an m30 like the article suggests) in here was very closely related to the m109 used in the 745i so you can use those parts to turbo it up close to 300 hp. You'll probably be able to go faster with an LSX, but it'll cost 10x as much…

My grey-market e30 was changed over to a MPH speedometer / odometer, but maintained the fuel economy and fuel level gauges in L / 100 KM and L. This e24 is absolutely not an original US car, the differences are NOT subtle.

I really don't think the 5-6 year old Mustang is going to come in anywhere near the same maintenance costs as the bimmer. The reason I brought up the battery issue was that BMW uses some sort of digital interface architecture, and you need to register the new battery with the BCM (or whatever they call it) which…

did you own any of those cars when they were older than about 5 or 6 years? Most cars do pretty well for that time frame, but I've heard about plenty of e46s that have gone through several coolant reservoirs and window regulators. I love my old bimmers, but really wouldn't ever consider buying a new one. Also, have…

Exactly, Mexico has the stats to be an industrialized nation, but has deteriorated to the point where it has a humanitarian crisis unheard of outside of the third world, as well as mass emmigation. I never really get why American politicians claim to be trying to fix the economy by emulating countries like Mexico and…

It's pretty sad that it seems that way... Mexico actually has the 14th largest GDP in the world, between Australia and South Korea. Human development index puts them at 56th highest, between Saudi Arabia and Malaysia (still not quite what I'd call third world).

Pretty sure this is the reasoning that turned the Thunderbird from a Corvette competitor to the butt of a lot of jokes.

does it actually have to have won lemans, or could it be one of a short series, another of which won lemans?

Article sure looked like it was making 200 ps at the crank, not the rear wheels (unless you're just saying "to the rear wheels" so we know this thing isn't fwd...)

Well, if Seattle has a lot of connections to the space program, it must be fairly low down on the subcomponent level. I don't think anyone in Seattle is doing any of the systems engineering tasks, participating in any design reviews or really playing any significant role in the process of designing, certifying and…

Kennedy Space Center is getting a shuttle

IMO the most insulting part was not only are we NOT getting a shuttle, but the big mockup that's used for mission planning / crew training, currently located at JSC and featured in the Space Center Houston public tour, is actually going to be boxed up and shipped to Seattle! WTF!

I think it often takes carfax months to post data. My guess is it wouldn't catch most of the fraud that involves a duplicate certificate of origin. In addition, even if you secure independent financing, the dealership may very well extend you a better offer just to rescind it down the road. I'm really not convinced…

@Kate's dirty sister: It was the successor to the original 6 series, and over 31k were produced. If you do a search for early '90s BMWs, a lot of them come up. Plus, there was the z8 which gained a decent bit of notoreity at the beginning of this decade.

Maserati Biturbo?

Yeah, these were rated at about 390 hp out of a 4.3 and weighed almost 4k. The mustang was probably more like 300 out of a 4.6 and closer to 3.5k. I'd imagine they'd be pretty similar in a drag race and it'd come down to driver skill. Of course, judging the Maserati solely on straight-line performance (or really any…

Option 2 - Maserati Spyder Cambiocorsa. I've seen a few of these on craigslist in the mid 20s to low 30s with 20-30k miles on them. That seems like a pretty cheap way to get a ferrari v8, even if it is saddled with a very heavy gt body and is prohibitively expensive to drive more than a few hundred miles a year.

XJR - I've seen this selling with about 100k miles for as low as 6k, and generally no higher than 9k. Seems like a hell of a bargain, even if I'm only going to be able to drive it a few hundred miles a year...