Counterpoint: they still charge extra for those things, you just can’t say no to them. Up until the mid 90s, Jeep was still acknowledging the fact that many of their buyers were going to be ripping all that stuff out anyway, so they were speccing trims that were like an off-road equivalent to the COPO Camaro.

$36K is an interesting number, because if you adjust it for inflation it’s what the top of the line Laredo cost in ‘87. The base was equivalent to around $25K.

“upgraded with an LS3 V8, late of a 2015 Chevy Camaro [”Camero” in the add...] SS”

“...average auto price of roughly $48,000...”

Hopefully that will be among the long list of charges.

For commercial operations, electric is doable but expensive. Mower batteries are swappable in about the time it takes to gas up, and if you have an electric truck you can be charging one set of batteries while mowing with another. There’s no way the maintenance savings over an all-gas operation is enough to cover that…

For all of the tools that used to be two-stroke (like blowers and trimmers), battery is a no brainer. Lighter, quieter, less stinky... And mine use the same batteries as the cordless tools in my workshop, so there’s always at least one charged battery in the house.

All of them

There’s a local company around here that I’ve seen making drop-offs at stores from a pickup with a tonneau cover over the back and absolutely no company or dot markings on it.

In the Sport/Limited trims, the 2.5+CVT are uninspiring but adequate. With bigger, heavier tires, I would expect some frustration.

It’s more likely that they missed it completely.

Big difference between hoping to get rid of and trying to get rid of.

It looks like it’s built to FSAE spec. The broader set of goals is to win races.

Usually the dealership is offering the car as a prize, and the insurance company pays them for it if someone wins.

It could be a little less or a little more depending on your tax bracket, but the IRS will consider the full market value of the car as taxable income. No state income tax in Florida, but you are on the hook for 6% sales tax.

The reason why it could end up in court for a while is the number of parties involved. The article only indicates that the tournament organizer and the Benz dealership are defendants, but there’s usually also an insurance company involved. Basically, instead of actually gambling the value of a car a dealership…

Who else would be able to cover the roughly $30k tax bill that comes along with this “free” car?

This makes sense, but it only works for qualifying and must be damn hard to get right. These caps aren’t like pressure relief valves; they basically just induce a slow leak. That leak needs to be fast enough to match the rate of heating on warmup, but not so fast that the pressure comes back down too far on the hot…

My point was that while the vast majority of the classic car market places a premium on matching numbers, that’s not the case with 250s. The kind of people who are in the market for these cars accept that they’ve all been raced and binned at least once in their lives.

Which is also why the owners of these cars are so willing to take them out and flog them at these events. Replacing sheet metal isn’t going to tank the resale value.