Let’s suppose things get so bad for Boeing due to their own trashing of their quality standards and shipping defective product that demand dries up and Boeing goes bankrupt. The Boeing management jackasses will descend upon DC screaming and crying for a bailout—absolutely guaranteed—privatized profits combined with…

I had it happen to me twice while driving that a deer leisurely sauntered right in front of me where if I didn’t do anything, I was going to slam into the dumb buck and hundreds of pounds of idiot deer meat was smashing through the windshield. I had to yank the wheel into the oncoming traffic lane one time to avoid…

The Taylor Aerocar from The New Bob Cummings Show:

A lot of these aren’t irrational. I’ve known people killed by deer. I had a plastic bag cause my car to overheat when it got stuck on the radiator, I’ve almost been killed by wrong way drivers, etc. Shoot, growing up, the 14th street bridge had a section fall out and lead to 2 cars ending up in the Potomac during rush…

Here’s a regular ‘94 Mustang GT convertible with 12K miles that sold for $19.5K on usually-sells-for-too-much-money BaT:

That’s the Achilles Heel of today’s “status” vehicles—since they’re nearly all blobs and blocks, the unwashed masses won’t recognize that you’re trundling about in a new blob. (I’m positive that’s why the Benz tristar grille badges are as big as Frisbees nowadays due to the blob issue.) So why pop $80K for a generic-lo…

Oh, I’m in complete agreement with your point.

Yes, I admit I painted with a wide brush about the jaw-dropping payments. The point still holds—money spent is still money spent and obscene vehicle payments:

Yes, you could have a lemon that needs constant repair. Cars are a crapshoot, that’s true. The eight year-old everyday car I bought four years has had nothing go wrong with it except for replacing the battery. And for the record, I’m a fiend about maintenance.

I’m with you on the LFA--truly meh looking.  The Benz doesn’t thrill me either with its snarling mouth full of black teeth, but here we are.

Uh-huh. Whatever. The styling still sucks big time. Lipstick Red paint and likewise for the interior don’t help anything either.  You’d buy it for 1) cachet, 2) performance but not looks.

And Dodge, the muscle car brand, is not listed as one of the worst? WTF? All those Hellcat owners are safely driving while hooning?

Excuse me: Texas is not on the list?

I’m not crazy about the looks of the Lexus, but the front of that Mercedes is like...

“If you’re going to buy a supercar, you might as well make it an interesting one.”

To be clear: This is directed at the people who made those graphs.

Yup. 16 year old car I’ve owned for 13 of those years, and only 2 big ticket items in all that time (a tranmission at 150k which was a little over $2k, and had the frame redone to get rid of a ton of rust for $4k-cost of living in the north and salted roads) but in my mind, that 6 grand over 13 years is still under…

Small nit pick: Median would be half above, half below. Average is most likely skewed by huge payments on super premium cars at the top end. I would assume with car payments there are not a lot of outliers at the low end. 

I think about the blob thing all the time. A car from 2014 does not feel nearly as old *today* as a car from 1994 did in 2004. Although I that’s probably equal parts about muted styling changes, quality improvements, and there not being anything novel left to do with interiors (although i hate that Tesla has convinced…

While I agree there is also a reliability piece. If I’m spending half a new car payment on maintenance and repairs every month the money is probably less of a concern than the car constantly failing me while I’m driving and/or being unavailable because the car is in the shop (or on jack stands in my driveway).