We picked up a rental from Avis a few years ago for a big trip (for space reasons), and ended up with a basically new (5 miles) SUV We proceeded to rack up just shy of 3400 miles in the 10 days we had it,, going from the middle of CA to portland via crater lake, then over to Yellowstone via Boise and Craters of the…

it seems fairly consistent from what i’ve seen...we shopped for probably a year before pulling the trigger, and it seemed to fluctuate a little, but consistently there.

i realize there’s some space between MSRP and sticker, but we shopped full size SUVs prior to purchasing a truck, and scratched that because even tahoes/yukons and suburbans/yukon XLs were stickering into the 70's and 80's.

agreed. maybe i’m a tad cynical, but i also put most of the blame on the dealers, be it one or more of garbage sales games (here comes the 4 square...), outrageous markups, or just lousy attitudes.  The last 2 are why i never made it to the first, though i was giving the titan a serious look at one point.

how much of it is about how good (or not) the Z is as a sports car, and how much of it is what i’ll sum up as “dealer shenanigans”?

https://www.autotrader.com/cars-for-sale/vehicle/725375357

agreed on the Optima seats, having had a couple as rentals. one of those times involved spending 8ish hours on the road in a day, too. not the worst ever, but also not great.

never been pulled over on the (red) bike. being out late at night can be a big factor for getting pulled over, though. used to get pulled over regularly either in the bone stock white honda, or my noisy little truck.

What you do when you’re trying to actually have a steady income and a running business...rather than the PE “strip mine it and leave the husk to die” method.

I’d call Red Lobster a great (and fairly clear-cut)example. PE took over, sold off land under the restaurants to finance the buy, which forced the company to lease it back (the article notes, at above market rates).

Straight up...there should be no “chance”.

why do I suspect at least some of that number is private equity fuckery?

the same ones that built houses near Laguna Seca and complained about the noise?

Came looking for the Youabian Puma, was not disappointed.

It’s a tad more complicated in CA, where using the time/distance is considered a “speed trap”, and not allowed to be used for prosecution.

I want to say I saw recall notice #3 for my old B-Series...it’s still in the family and waiting on parts. It was an unholy pain in the ass for #1, and #2 I made sure they had parts in before dropping it off the second time (biggest problem with the first, dealer #1 didn’t actually order), and I stayed breathing down…

yeah, the humidity was unexpected, though we may have missed some rain. we stopped in Tucson on the return run, and were greeted with a downpour.

Yeah, I’ve spent a little time in Texas and DC in the summer...a dry 95 is worlds better than 95 and 90% humidity. We also stopped in Phoenix one of those trips, and found 95 degrees and around 80% humidity when we got up at 4am to walk the dogs and pack for the next day of travel

got in my truck on sunday, NWS was reporting 108F in my area.

no disagreement that it SHOULD be better than that, especially for the price.