Open thread topic: I'm offering up my '06 Suburban to any ACF-er who's not afraid of a bit of mileage and worships at the altar of pre-AFM GM LS motors.
Basic Details:
Location: Indianapolis Indiana
Price: $3000
2006 Chevy Suburban 1500 LS 4WD 315k miles 5.3L
Auto/Part time 4WD with Low range. G80 Spin Locker
Runs down the road at 80+ straight and smooth with hot heat and meat locker AC. All accessories work.
I bought it from the previous owner who bought it as a 1yr old ex-Avis truck and drove 289k of the 315k miles in salt-free Colorado: basically zero rust, doubly so because I've been diligently undercoating the thing with Fluid Film and Wool Wax, and quite frankly the thing sits out most of the winter salt-road driving. He had rebuilt the transmission at 130k miles (the typical stock 4L60E lifespan), and it got rear end work at around 180k miles. When I bought the truck in 2020 I went through *ALL* the various wear items that needed doing: all new shocks all around, brakes front and rear, t-case encoder, full fluid service, water pump, belts and hoses, vent valve, oil pan gasket (oil pan was spotless inside thanks to the PO's diligent use of full synthetic). I dropped around $2k on it two springs ago to get the rear end redone (pinion bearing, axle bearings, brake backing plates) as well as the t-case serviced and rebuilt with a "case saver" for the NP 246. The truck is current rolling on studded General Altimax Arctics with lots of life left in them. Summer tires mounted on stock 16" alloys are Bridgestone Dueler LTH that will need to be replaced within 10k miles or so.
Minor annoyances:
-HVAC backlighting is out. Simple fix, I've simply been too lazy to go messing with it.
-"service tire monitor" message comes on every time you start the truck. Hit the cancel button on the steering wheel and forget all about it.
-A few dents and dings around the truck, most notably LH side of rear bumper. Can send photos to seriously interested parties
-minor drip from rear diff cover. This was resealed as part of the rebuild and I don't know if it's because I've been running it overfilled, could be solved with a new diff cover gasket presumably.
-Minor oil leak from back of the motor. Could this be the beginnings of a rear main seal leak? I dunno. I put a quart of Lucas Stop Leak in with every 5k synthetic oil change (Walmart supertech, AC Delco filter) and it stays dry and out of mind. Engine has excellent oil pressure, 30+ PSI hot idle running 5W-30.
I'd hop in and drive the thing to Alaska tomorrow given the chance. I trust it to haul my family down to the OBX from Indiana twice so I could drive it on the beach, out to Quebec last winter, countless trips out to NY and PA to visit family. Drive it like a granny on state highways and you will see an honest to god 20mpg out of this rig I kid you not. More typical highway speeds and mixed driving yields 17mpg or so.
Reason for sale is I simply never use the damn thing. Our minivan does fine with snow tires in our Indiana winters and now with a hitch will be able to handle occasional light motorcycle trailer duty, and that's about all I've used the Chevy for in the last several years. So it sits taking up space in the driveway and in the back of my mind, it's time to move on. Anyone seriously interested I think you can contact me through substack(?)
I plan on coming to the supercross race at Indy March 16th, if you still have it by then I’ll look you up. I’ve been on the hunt for a full size tow vehicle that’s not losing the battle to rust.
By midwestern standards this thing is surgically clean underneath. All of the usual concerns: brake and fuel lines, soft frames, shot rockers, etc all a non-issue.
Let me know if you're still interested in checking the Suburban out. I was still waffling on selling it, kind of pissed at the thought of letting go of such a nice driving functional 4wd SUV for "only" $3k to the general public, but for a fellow ACFer I feel like at least it'd be going to a deserving person.
I deliberated on it for weeks since finding something clean is so difficult, but ultimately I think I need the functionality of a pickup bed. Thank you for checking back though.
I keep trying to get mine to commute in the thing atleast through pothole season. I had put the "nicer" Monroe shocks on the front. Between that and the bigger than stock 265/75R16 snow tires it absolutely bombs through bad roads. And no worries about some uninsured illegal rear ending you in traffic you probably wouldn't even feel a thing.
What’s the closest airport? Or meet at the Baruth estate? And Jack how about a 2009 Ford Fusion SE six-speed stick, 148k miles, to sweeten/complicate/sour the deal?
Whoa, we're at most 2 counties apart. I'll ask the boss if we're in the market for a truck with a working transmission, as opposed to our fleet of disabled Fords and Toyotas. I prefer working out of pickups with open beds but right now that means cramming my surveying stuff in a single cab F350 XL 7.3 with a fuel tank taking up 30% of the bed.. If not I'm interested just buying it myself.
Fair enough. My dad is looking for a tow/road trip vehicle and this sounded up his alley. I didn't want to waste your/Jack's time if it wasn't something he was interested in.
It would handle that with ease. I’ve towed a few 3500lb ish cars on twin axle u haul trailers, two 500-600lb motorcycles at the same time with the larger twin axle uhaul utility trailer. Can barely tell it’s there. I put it into tow/haul mode in hilly areas and I like how it sets the shift points up.
TLDR: I’m out of the Suburban game so open to other bidders (but do have the Fusion; semi-detailed proposal to follow).
Checked with my mason friend who needed a replacement for his 2002 Chevy suburban 1500 5.3 L with a blown 4LE60 transmission, unbeknownst to me he’s getting another truck tomorrow, he’s been borrowing our beater Volvo wagon. We’re six hours to the East of Baruthland
Hey as long as Stellantis keeps fire saleing 4xes I’ll probably keep leasing the pieces of shit. Are they great, no, are they reliable and economical, also no, but they’re the most interesting you can lease for my (very little) money.
It’s a lease. Taxes/fees down + first month’s payment. Conventional wisdom is 1% of MSRP at $0 down is the target. My current 4xe is $60k sticker, $420/mo lease. On line I call the one I’m thinking of ordering at just over $70k, payment online is $515ish, I figure it will be that or a little less. Takes into account the $7500 tax credit, and the online calc wants a 10% down payment I assume as a discount.
Might need to call my old Ram sales guy about one for those kind of low low prices. I'm leasing a similar MSRP priced 22' f-150 also for $420/mo (nothing down) that's due back in late April. I don't really want a truck anymore, and have no passion for just about anything south of a 6 figure MSRP currently on the market new. Tempting even if stellantis reliability is hot garbage.
One of the main, and possibly the only, perks of living in the Midwest is knowing at least one person that will give up an Employee pin # for a nice steak dinner. Cheaper than a broker :D I have always liked GC's and can't beat the price to rinse and repeat after 2 years.
I’ve been toying with getting a Wrangler forever, but I’d rather have a 2 door and don’t really want the 4xe. But the 4xe is now the only way to get the full time transfer case, and availability is better in general.
Yeah. Early on had an issue which needed a software patch. Then I had a coolant heater pump go out which caused the EV system and the HVAC system to be inop for 2 months. Currently I’m under recall which means I can’t park the Jeep inside or charge it. Probably a nothingburger, but “unexplained fires are a matter for the courts.” Jeep has 26.6k miles on it. But it’s a first year Stellantis vehicle, I expected all of this. It’s a great least and a shitty buy, especially since IMO most people have no business buying a $60-70k+ vehicle if they aren’t over the income cap that makes them ineligibility for the tax credit.
You do you, I won’t try to talk anyone into one of these, but I’m part of a fairly small recall (32k vehicles) based on 6-8 actual fires, of which 4-5 might have been due to crappy aftermarket accessory wiring. I’m following the rules because it’s painless and the downside is catastrophic, but I have zero thought my Jeep is actually going to catch fire. But I for sure understand why others don’t want the potential headache.
Listen, my Mom had both the sedan Seville and the bustleback, both in metallic blue, so I can damn well drive my soulless Porsches now cause I did my time.
Back in the day I worked in an exclusive neighborhood gas station. I bought a lot of cars that the locals didn't think were worth fixing. I mean cars that were only 4 or 5 years old. I did much better on the resale of the busleback Sevilles by hundreds to almost thousands of dollars.
i think the funniest part about CDG is that he advocates for buying crappy used cars on his twitter page and actively chastises people who want to do anything other than drive a 15k used camry. its right in line with the inability of auto journalists to provide real car buying advice or opinions, except his preferred line of projection is to try and "bucket of crabs" everyone into driving the same 6-10 year old japanese appliances. i wonder if perhaps he stands to benefit from people buying old cars that may need constant replacement and service vs new ones.... hmmmm.....
The "it only makes sense to buy used" segment of the internet amuses me. Deprecation
with new car can surely be a mother fucker but with a used car the cost of parts and repairs as well as the subsequent possibly of not having a car for a few days because it's in the shop can be way way worse. For context, I should mention that in the past I have worked as car salesman for both new and used cars, a service advisor and as a counter person at an auto parts store so I do have slightly more than cursory knowledge on this subject.
"it only needs to get you reliably point A to point B!!!! anything else is throwing money away!!!!" riiiight reminds me of all the money i could save by eating gruel, rice, and insects for every meal as long as it hits all my macros
It’s scary how many people think having a diet consisting exclusively of beans and rice and driving a POS used car till the wheels falls off is the best way to become financially secure. I’d rather die penniless than live that way.
i think unfortunately it says more about the financial situation of an increasingly large subset of people where $300 of unexpected expenses in a month is a major problem. but agree.
Yeah but a lot of THOSE people are doing whatever they want, within reason. The performative savings stuff is the domain of people making middle class income but determined to retire at 55.
I’ve read a fair amount of stuff from the FIRE community. They tend to fall into one of two camps:
-People who have a serious hobby they are obsessed with and desperate to devote more time to, especially if it’s a free hobby like gardening or reading library books or bird watching or something
-people who are painfully socially awkward and/or on some kind of spectrum who find the very act of interacting with people horrible.
Me personally, all my hobbies are at least moderately expensive, and so retiring early would preclude my participating in them. Plus I’ve got the golden handcuffs of a very nice lifestyle that I’m committing to maintaining for myself and my family, so wage slave it is.
All that money and nothing to do with it. A lifetime of frugality isnt gonna turn the switch at fifty five. If you even see fifty five. Im more of a saver than a spender but im not living off beeans and rice
That's true, although any 15-year-old car is a gamble and could incur $300 (or much more) in expenses at a moment's notice. Just because it's a Camry doesn't mean it won't break. In particular, the 2007+ 2.4-liter Camry is prone to rampant oil-burning at higher mileages, and no one talks about it. I steered my cousin away from an overpriced 2009 Camry LE (and into a 2007 Buick Lucerne CXL with the 3800) for that very reason.
08-09 are the oil burning years for the Toyota 2.4s IIRC. 10-11 is a sweet spot of the new 2.5+6spd in the facelifted XV40 body (you could get that handsome dark forest green color too), but before the dumb "flex-lock" torque converter programming that can chew up 12-14 Camry transmissions on cars that see a lot of low speed driving (several TSBs and a quiet transmission warranty extension to 8yrs/150k miles). Toyota is starting to stumble with increasing frequency, unfortunately.
It's not bullshit to the adult-sized children who have 4 times their income in consumer debt. His advice is for the children too stupid to come home when the streetlights go on.
The big one here is that getting out of debt is not supposed to be some all-consuming, every-penny-counts quest. The modern economy runs on debt, and Ramsey's advice - well, his BRAND - is unrealistic much of the time.
I'm not a Dave Ramsey aficionado but if you're at the point you need Daves advice, you probably really need it. Some people just spend way too much money? My definition of "Way too much money" is "More than you make" Don't buy luxury items at 30% interest. Guys making 500k a year with huge credit card balances. Guy who gets a new job and spends his first paycheck before he gets it.
What galls me is that he got HIMSELF into trouble, decided it was the DEBT that did it rather than his ambition and went all evangelical on the notion that Debt Is Bad.
The people who give this sort of advice has never worked on their car all night just to make it to work the next morning and it shows.
I promised myself years ago that I’d never put myself in that sort of position. Even now, I’d love to sell my truck and daily a pre-emissions diesel but that’s too much of a headache to deal with.
For work alone, I drive like 20k + miles per year. I hesitate to own anything without a warranty that I have to depend on to make a living every day.
I don’t make smart choices in cars, but I’m also not trying to drive 20k miles up and down busy interstates in a 15 year old Camry just to save a buck.
For that reason alone, I’m probably selling my beloved Bronco for something less stupid instead of getting a “work beater.” Just no economical sense in it,
I drove fully depreciated used jaguars, paid cash. In hindsight I should have borrowed money for a manual C5 or C6. More reliable, more efficient, and lots of residual value.
Jack summed it up nicely in You Gotta Be Rich to Own a Cheap Car:
"On the Internet, everybody has a six-figure savings account and a seven-figure retirement account. Everybody pays cash for everything while simultaneously dumping massive amounts of money into investments. They’re all the Millionaires Next Door and they know more about money and investing and prudent decision-making than Warren Buffet and Sam Walton combined. In the real world, people are victimized by everything from economic downturns to poor decisions they made when they were too young to know any better. In the real world, most families are just getting by and the rainy-day money they’ve saved rarely measures up to the endless tide of rainy days.
For those families, a new-car payment is a burden — but it’s one they can predict and live with. It sucks to “throw away” $300 or $400 every month, but it’s never a surprise and in exchange they have freedom from surprises. They have freedom from the surprise of losing two days of work or being stuck with their children by the side of a fifteen-degree freeway all night or having to diagnose mechanical issues using a cellphone flash and whatever conventional wisdom their parents bothered to impart when they weren’t off doing their own thing. They know that every month they are exchanging a fixed sum of money for certainty and reliability."
Sincerely - a guy who spent all last night replacing the starter in a 2008 Ranger
Also, speaking of internet experts, this week I was pleased to read that annual equivalent returns on Cathie 'Tesla stock is a tech stock' Wood's Ark Invest are 2%. I am impressed by her commitment but just because you are prepared to back your babbling with money, doesn't make your babblings fact. Even Mary Barra is doing better than 2%!
I spent every college break/holiday in college repairing my (at the time) 20 year old car. Great, great lesson. Granted, since it was a 1974 Buick, had I had the money, I could have probably put it in an okay shape, and drive it for another 20 years. But being a broke college student, I could only repair what broke, when it broke. Not a great recipe for reliability, when you have to drive 70-80 miles/day. I walked the last few miles home more than once.
My Iphone 12 pairing with my Audi always had quirks. Work gave me a new Iphone 15 and those quirks disappeared. "Gave me..." I pay for it... At least it's deductible.
Here's people thinking computers are going to control us through 'AI' when they actually already control us with their limitations and their shortcomings.
Before the pandemic, when I purchased a new car, the problem I ran into was that I could finance a brand new car at 1 percent and a 3 year old car was at 5 percent. On the total life of the loan I might save 1K on buying used, but if I purchased new, I got the full manufacture warranty.
I was too young to go to that Olympia show in '75, but my friends older brother had an AMC Gremlin X that we rode around in listening to FM rock in Detroit. Good times.
I saw Tull at the State Fair Coliseum on their tour to support Aqualung, just as they were breaking big. Edger Winter's White Trash and a local band were the supporting acts. General admission, we got there straight from school so were able to stake out places right in front of the stage, near one of the PA columns. I couldn't hear in my right ear for three days after that show.
No doubt! I remember getting that record and discovering the wonderful poster.
Later my mom went through all my records after watching a Phil Donahue thing on backwards masking. It was a vinyl massacre but that one snuck by for some reason.
Robin Zander is underrated as a lead singer. Living in Chicago, Cheap Trick was always a fun band. Just great power pop.
That Seville coupe just shows how much fun this country used to exude in the 1950s through the 1980s. The Seville was rich people fun, but at the same time normal Americans bought cars with wild colors, wore interesting clothes, and acted as humorous, fun people and displayed an enjoyment for life . Now everyone aspires to a bland coolness, which is totally boring because it’s the same across the board. That’s why cars are all black, white, and grey for the past few decades.
Like Buster Douglas, Cheap Trick will never be forgotten because for one night in Tokyo, they were the absolute best in the world at what they did. Fleeting greatness is still greatness.
The original ABX Air Aces crew with Dave Dixon, later on WDET was terrific. Dixon, btw, co-wrote I Dig Rock N' Roll Music which was a modest hit by Peter, Paul & Mary.
We could get The RIF down in Toledo, but everywhere I ever worked had FM104.7 WIOT... WI... O... T on their radios. The last time I heard that station it seemed like they were still playing the same 25 songs they were playing when I last lived there. My friends and I listened to 89X or 106.5 The Buzz (a short-lived rock station) when we weren't listening to CDs or mix tapes. Hahahaha, mix tapes!
Spot on about WRIF and WIOT. It's pretty much all the tunes your dad listened to in 1985 with some Pearl Jam and Nickleback thrown in.
I miss 89X dearly, but it was pretty bad near the end. In their heyday, the station did a lot to promote the local scene and expose people to new music. They carried on with what WRIF stopped caring to do in about 1986.
Absolutely. I heard 89X just before its demise and it was a shadow of itself. But then again, all the people who had run it were older or gone, as well as all its listeners, so perhaps it had simply run its course. Younger generations have to find and develop new stuff on their own.
I never heard what happened to 89X, but I know that if the station is still on the air, it’s not playing the format it did in the past.
WXKR, 94.5, is a bit more like classic WIOT. You have to remember, though, that in the 1990s the whole classic rock format bifurcated into grunge and rap, someone correct me if I’m wrong.
In another twenty years, they might not have enough of an audience for classic rock stations.
Hell, it bothers me that the “oldies” stations are playing ‘80s music! 😲
My first concert was in 1968 when I was 14. Headliner was Herman’s Hermits (Henry the Eighth). Fronting them was Blues Magoo. Warm up band was The Who, who destroyed their instruments at the end of their routine. It blew our innocent little Teeny Bopper minds! In hindsight, Is that not the most ironically inverse band line-up you could conceive of?
Couple of random thoughts...That Zeppelin photo is amazing to me because every face you see is engaged in a REAL experience. Something they likely never forgot and tried to recreate many times, I'm sure. The current audience fillers don't have time to pay attention to the show as they're too engaged in setting up photos of themselves showing how "better" their experience is than yours. And missing the point entirely.
I didn't realize Tyrese (or anyone else) was still putting out old school R&B. Not a bad tune even if something seems a bit off from the authentic 70's sound (synthesizer maybe?). I miss the brass of so many older songs - maybe someone can fire up some Tower of Power sound one day. Who knows.
Flipping channels and Beyond Thunderdome happened to be on. I forgot that Aunty Entity had a sax player to set the mood when she is doing job interviews.
I'm not so sure people are going to look back. Mainly because so many of these 'artists' don't have any real talent. The people setting up the machinery, the electronics, the autotune, the editors, the effects people, the folks running the playback - that's were the talent is. The singers can't sing and sound like shit (remember those two black actors and all the trouble they got in for lip-syncing, when nowadays all of the pop artists do it?) and they're all replaceable like the girls in any Japanese girl band or the guys in any boy band.
There are so many more people in the world today than there was in 75, that to stand out, to really be remembered, you have to not only be special on multiple levels, but there has to be something about you that people WANT to remember.
Everything is hype now and people know it. So they don't really attach themselves to it.
Yeah, I just remember him from that dumb song when I was nine. I looked up his discography and he’s put out 50 studio albums, 125 singles, 2 of which hit #1. Plus a couple of Grammys. Who knew!
I only know two or three of these songs by name (I was born in 1981) but I'll bet I'd know a lot more if I heard them, and I recognize the names of almost every artist on the list.
The artists have a completely different sort of talent. I never fail to be amazed at The Chainsmokers business strategy. Song to catch everyone's attention immediately followed up with a solid album. They knew they weren't great singers so they collaborated with great singers which also served to promote them to different audiences.
Both guys also have non music ventures going on in the background too. And mad work ethic even more than talent.
But it's not something anybody is going to remember 20 years from now.
I've sold over a million copies of my books so far. I have a lot of fans. A lot. I understand 'lasting fame' and all that. I see it around me in my industry. I know that 20 years after I'm gone, for all the books I've sold, for all of the #1 best sellers, for all of the money, that nobody is going to remember me.
Actually there ISN'T a lot of 'good hard work'. There are a bunch of lazy ass people with no talent who are using machines to sound talented. Or who are being pushed on us by our betters so they can make money.
It's the amount of lazy-ass talentless hacks who are 'swamping the talent'. The people who think they can 'get rich quick' with zero effort, zero talent, who cheat at every opportunity.
I was 15 when this photo was taken, what you say about the radio being our lifeline to what was happening is so accurate, and this word which I can’t pronounce.......this longing for something that can never be replaced, repeated, only viewed as something that happened, things that we did, and the things that we did with 6x9 speakers and ampex tapes to get music into our cars, the way we haphazardly installed a tapedeck/receiver into the dash, with all the wires just dangling from under the dash...... we would have the biggest smiles.
"This word I can't pronounce" is Jack filling some space with a little pretension (and don't we love him for it?). Welsh! Really? Has he been listening to BBC Radio 6? I am sure he may say it is a fine and ancient Celtic tongue, but I stopped at a cafe one afternoon in Bala (mid mid Wales) a little chilled on my bike and discovered that the Welsh word for sausage is apparently "sosej." Hmm...
BBC Radio 6 is a music station that (I think) is available on the web. It has quite a bit of Cerys Matthews from Catatonia presenting, she of the fabulous Welsh voice ("you give me road rrrrage...") so I just wondered if he had stumbled across the word there. A wild surmise, I will confess, but we mustn't allow too much detailed diligence and adherence to truth to spoil the fun here, must we?
Very good. Apposite, too; my wife and I were in a pub a few years back and a party of office ladies arrived for a Christmas dinner. They were a very jolly, friendly lot; but small they were not. I remember being struck by the thought that if I were a young man these days my choices would be a lot more circumscribed than they were in the dim, dark 1970s. Let's just say that I wouldn't have wanted to be wobbling around London with one on the back of my Norton.
Should we ever meet (a thing devoutly to be wished but, alas, of low probability), I shall tell you the joke that I can remember. It requires performance rather than print and an audience inured to insensitivity.
I was also 15 at the time. However, after a little incident with wire hanging low under the dash I became more of a professional which led to my first career as a custom stereo system installer. By 18 I had cars from all over in our shop and not to date myself but the CES show was still in Chicago. One of my best memories is a new BMW that Clifford Alarms sent me for the show. I definitely miss it!!!!
"Feel free, if you like, to discuss why almost all the cheapest leases for Feb 2024 are EVs, using our handy “comment section"
Well...... I guess Reality is a Bitch. Also, "You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time. But you can't fool ALL the people ALL of the time.
If someone wants an EV by all means buy it, live with it and regret it. All to your individual regret. Do not presume to force me to play stupid and believe EV's are viable from an operational or cost standpoint. In another 50 years, maybe. The idiots that buy EV's thinking they will be a 100% equivalent replacement for their ICE vehicle are suckers. I mean that in every pejorative sense you can think of. Forcing the Free Market to abandon its principals based on some BS man made climate change falsehood is at minimum stupid or a fraud. Range, Charging infrastructure and cost ( subsidized or unsubsidized you pay either way) are just first tier disadvantages. The cost to build out the required charging infrastructure alone would be a huge negative impact to our society.
I’m sure it was with some hyperbole, but the GM of a Caddy store just today told me he hasn’t sold a single Lyriq that has not come back for repairs within 90 days.
Most mechanical issues can be figured out by any competent shop. Good luck having an electric gremlin solved without replacing many expensive electrical parts in an attempt to solve a problem .
I've been thinking about this but it makes even better sense with formery-ICE-powered but unrepairable cars, with nice interiors and curb appeal. Thinking of any out of warranty Land Rover as an example.
On NPR they were pointing out the CAFE angle, which is something I haven't been pissed off about recently enough. Of course they were lamenting that <s>forcing EVs down dealer throats</s>selling EVs allowed the automakers to sell those awful white trash pickup trucks without running afoul of CAFE. They were hard to follow but I think their solutions was to end CAFE or just ban ICE or something.
I wonder ... Comment like this is something that should be like-able more than once. Is this crappy commenting system Jack's secret plot to get people to sign up more than once for ACF, so they can like certain comments more than once?
Whoa! Does this kind of thinking qualify one as a "journalist" these days? Wh...!!!
I’m convinced CAFE is why Jeep/Stellantis is blowing out 4xes. It takes a lot of neutered PHEVs to offset Rams and Jeep 492s and Charger/Challenger Hellcats and the like.
I didn't really push it too hard because the cheapest Wagoneer is probably 10k more than the most expensive telluride and I didn't want the cheapest Wagoneer. Jeep throws more money at you than Kia does but this was still in the "Supply chain" crisis. I'd like to think Kia will be more reliable than Jeep. All I head from my Honda friend is "Can't believe you got a Kia when you could've got a Pilot' The KIA is nicer than the Pilot. Plus, and here's the big thing, my wife didn't want a Pilot. So far, no issues with the KIA. Crosses fingers...
The brand new for 2023 Pilot is a big improvement over the last generation. Stylistically it is more in line with a Telluride than, for example, a Highlander.
I am hoping the pendulum is swinging back to boxy for these 3 row CUVs, if the new Pilot or Grand Highlander are any indication of the trend.
Fair comment perhaps, but name a more reliable 3 row that doesn't suck. All ford products out, Pilot out because it sucks, GM products out (suck and not necessarily reliable), Mazda CX-90 out, Highlander ugly even if reliable, Jeep JGC-L lovely looking but a service bay queen, and on and on
how GD hard is it to make a reliable car. We had this problem solved in the 1980s with my grandfathers chevrolet caprice. The number one "reliability first" car segment should be minivans and 3 rows yet (in the case of the latter at least) its the opposite.
The only conventional option on the list is a Silverado 1500 and probably a 4 cylinder at that. That has to make some of the EV options much more palatable.
The 4cylinder is deeply discounted to the 5.3 per my friend that just got one. They are 1 year flippers so he’s not too worried about long term reliability.
I could see owning an EV, but it would be strictly a commuter, so a third car. I can't see paying that much money for a luxury like that. I have an old beater pickup and it's much more useful.
I cannot fathom how short these peoples memories are. Dieselgate was less than 10 years ago and we're back in the loop of manufacturers making cars to suit government regulations that they lobbied for to get customers to buy the cars they were making to suit government regulations.
The reason EV leases are so cheap is that the leasing company will factor in the tax credit(s) in the lease payment. Which is preferable to you having to deal with that -- and the associated income limitations/restrictions thereof.
Second is that for EVs, leasing make sense over buying. Given the current uncertainty of battery life, replacement cost, and diminishing range over time/temp, do you *really* want to own a seven year old EV? Lease it for three years and it's the leasing company's problem.
When/If Toyota decides to enter the EV game and there are 15 year old EV Camry's clogging the streets, *then* I'll be interested in buying vs leasing.
Assuming the Free Market were functioning properly ......... and your assumptions were correct....... would seem that leases for EV's would be more expensive? You do realize that dealers are loaded with unsold EV's currently ?? Lease em'' cheap. at least get some kinda cash flow coming the right way.
She ticks every one of my boxes. She just does it for me. So do short irish chicks with big boobs and wide hips though... so maybe my type is "Breathing and not overweight"
George Dorsey found success with the stage name of Engelbert Humperdinck, described as "one of the finest middle-of-the-road balladeers around" which is practically the definition of damning with faint praise.
The harmonica player in the J. Geils Band goes by Magic Dick. If you birthname was Richard Salwitz, you might go by Magic Dick too.
I get your point but I don't think Michael has ever frightened anybody in his life. Sure, he's a passive aggressive little shit but in any kind of real confrontation he'd fold up like a Samsonite chair. You know the kid that got picked last when boys choose up sides in a game? He got picked before Michael. The kid who played right field in Little League? Mike was second string to him.
I was never anything but nice to him and he went out of his way to be an asshole. What kind of a threat was I to him?
It’s funny because that Seville (and its neo-classical ilk) were the result of Detroit clinging to the past when the market was changing rapidly beneath it. The irony of course is the bustle-back Seville was Mitchell’s last car before he retired, and it replaced a Seville that was much more modern and international in its design. Perhaps it’s not so strange for a man in uncertain times and nearing the end of his tenure to fall into the nostalgia trap.
True. Also, whatever anyone thinks of the gen. 2/bustleback Seville, it's a helluva lot better than the gen. 3, which was easily the worst one. I simply cannot stand the formal roofline, combined with the stubby C-pillar. The proportions were all wrong.
The bustleback was also one of the last implementations of GM's odd FWD Unified Powerplant Package (UPP), in which the engine was mounted longitudinally and sat beside the also longitude-mounted transmission, with the two being linked by a very heavy chain. And I'm a UPP nerd and admirer. I was brought home from the hospital in a 1985 Riviera with the 307, which also had the UPP and was a platform sister to the bustleback Seville (though the Seville continued to receive the K-body designation).
Put another way: "You down with UPP?! Yeah, you know me!"
That's just proof of it's versatility. I'm not a motorhomes kind of guy. I'm more a hotels with cocktail bars kind of guy. But I HAD to stay in a motorhome, one of those GMC bad boys would absolutely be it.
I'd like to think that had I been an early Boomer, my driveway would have an Eldorado and a short wheelbase GMC motor home, both in that Sixties olive green.
You can stay in a lot of Nice Hotel rooms for the cost of a motorhome. And they depreciate like a rock. If I'm gonna throw a lot of money on a quickly depreciating assets, it's gonna be a boat.
It's probably an outlier but the GMC Motorhome has retained plenty of value. There's an active community of collectors and enthusiasts. When I've written about them the articles get a lot of traffic.
The Seville was the last production car that Mitchell supervised but his last project was a concept called the Phantom, that possibly had its origin in the same Wayne Cady sketch for a V16 powered coupe that spawned the bustle back Seville. From his comments about the Phantom it was clear that he knew his time had passed.
The former certainly. The latter, despite being from east London my knowledge is somewhat lacking. I was thinking more of 'A Century of Automotive Style' and 'The Art of American Car Design'. Pretty much the definitive texts on American car design up to the early eighties.
I have "A Century of Automotive Style" on disc. I got it directly from Michael Lamm, might have been a gift.
Any chance you've seen "Detroit Style: Car Design in the Motor City 1950-2020"? It's the companion book to an exhibit at the Detroit Institute of Arts that included cars, studio drawings, and some original art.
I know of it, but I havem’t seen it. Do you know how widely available it was/is? Sometime these things get a very limited release and can be hard/expensive to get hold of.
Knowing that Jack would have a busy week that might preclude a midweek open thread, I had half a mind to chum the waters with some engaging content in his temporary absence.
2-Christian Horny appears to be on the hot seat at Red Bull; should he be defenestrated by the Thai shareholders and Mark Mateschitz, I anticipate that Adrian Newey and Max Verstappen will be looking to take their talents elsewhere. John Elkann would likely give Adrian a blank check.
3-Porsche announced a facelifted Taycan yesterday. Big battery improvements (more hp, much more range) and some minor aesthetic tweaks. I wonder if it will be enough to reinvigorate sales … and I wonder how (already soft) used Taycan prices will react.
Tom, it’s Wisconsin or bust! An ACF supper club gathering would be supreme.
I’m not sure which supper club I was in years ago in Wisconsin, possibly around Minoqua on Hwy 51, but they had a couple of Northern Pike swimming around in a large fish tank, and the bar back was a massive, vintage Brunswick bar with fantastic colored lighting. It was wintertime so there were more snow mobiles in the parking lot than cars.
One reason Porsches (and Rolexes, but NOT Land Rovers) tend to maintain value well is that the changes from generation to generation are incremental (and predictable).
Kneecapping values in an already soft market is not the way to treat customers of six figure cars, assuming you’d like them to continue being customers. And this on the heels of a market in which people thought they’d make money speculating on cars!
He is on the record as saying he wished he’d had the opportunity to work with Ferrari (and several offers have been made in the past) and Hamilton. What if he can get both, and on the cusp of new rules in 2026?
0) As a relative prole I’ve always wondered what’s the point of paying some multiple of the total cost of attending a prestigious university to get your fuck trophies in? Is it purely a prestige play? Because I can’t see how paying like $5M to get a kid into Harvard where he/she will probably struggle is better than spending that $5M to set them up with a business or trust fund or whatever.
Two kinds of people send their children to prestige schools:
0. The kind of people who succeeded on their own but either don't want their kids to work that hard OR think their kids don't really have what it takes to succeed on their own. This, incidentally, is part of the "Millionaire Next Door" fellow's discovery that most self-made men force their children into ready-made wealth professions like law and medicine;
1. People who are to the manner born and expect their children to follow suit.
Prestige. People take college VERY seriously in America.
And also, a $5MM donation - for reference, the article says that $10MM is about the going rate to ensure admission at an elite school - to get into a school is likely money well spent given (0) the beneficiary will come from a wealthy background already (access to capital for the future), (1) the beneficiary will come from a family that understands the value of relationships and soft power, and (2) the beneficiary will likely have observed their parents working as entrepreneurs to grow a business (you don’t have $5MM+ to donate to a school as a wage slave).
So the beneficiary will be thinking about all of that - capital allocation; building a business; leveraging relationships - as they work their way through college, where they will meet other people who will go on to do a variety of things.
I didn’t go to Harvard, but … I have two different opportunities in front of people I went to college with at the moment; these are not people I have been close to at all since I graduated in 2011 (I just sent them messages on LinkedIn). I was able to (1) get Jack Daniel’s to evaluate a Le Mans / WEC sponsorship opportunity, and (2) to get a niche, specialty bank to contemplate banking a sector of lucrative (but high risk) clients based on those relationships.
From down here in prole world if you have $5-10M you can “throw away” on getting a kid into a nicer college, implying he/she can’t hack it on their own, you’ve already won. Take your ball and go home. But this mentality is probably partially why I don’t have $5-10M.
It talks about the arms race among the most affluent, privileged applicants (there are only so many rich, White/Jewish/Asian students who attended the top tier of Manhattan private day schools - or elite NE boarding schools for that matter - and had stellar grades, test scores, and extracurricular, etc. favorables that any given desirable college can admit).
I had dinner on Sunday night with a friend I met in Chicago. He grew up in small town Nebraska (100 miles from Omaha), where his family has been in the cattle business since the 1880s. He earned an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of Chicago, but he is now working as a cattleman.
He was passing through Atlanta en route to Nebraska and spent the night with a U Chicago friend who lives here; that friend is … a high end college admissions consultant!
The consultant agreed with my idea - move somewhere remote and apply to Harvard, etc. as someone who grew up in Eastern Kentucky or South Texas or wherever.
The headlines on The Race and Racefans started out with just him facing accusations, and being investigated. It was dystopian, nothing about who was accusing him or of what. It was enough that he was accused.
Eventually it was a woman was accusing him of...something?
Maybe I can get my local newspaper to say my rivals are being investigated. Think they would want to know by who or why before printing?
It seems like he is being accused of being a highly demanding control freak. Well no shit, how do you think they got to the top of the heap in F1, luck?
Of course if he pulled a Brett Farve and is sending around dick pics, his life as he knows it is pretty much over.
The bustle back Seville is one of GM’s last great designs or perhaps last time the designers had the upper hand. On its unveiling to a group of Cadillac dealers it received a standing ovation.
If you like the neo-classic lines thank designer Wayne Kady and Bill Mitchell who got it to production.
The 80-85 Seville looks best in all black or all white, I will brook no two-tone combinations as I feel it spoils the lines. For two years or so I daily drove a black over red leather 85 Seville, such an elegant car, especially with the standard wheel disks, instead of the wire wheel hubcaps. Cursed with the 4.1, the Seville managed 30 mpg with the cruise set at 65 (no hills please) but she succumbed to a front lower main bearing failure despite my following all the 4.1 maintenance rituals.
I would still welcome a 80-81 Seville with the 350 Olds or Cadillac 368 into my fleet.
16 cylinder cars are cool and the sixteen was something that should have been produced for no other reason than to provide an alternative to rolls royce maybe
There is a line in one of my all-time favorite songs "Bling Bling" where one of the rappers claims that Baby is getting a custom built V14 Mercedes. Obviously that was a Spinal Tap-esque boast that his car was two better than a V12, but it is not hard to imagine the kind of credibility Caddy would have if they actually made a modern V16.
Really? I always liked the two-tone black and silver ones.
It's also not lost on me that if the bustleback Seville existed today, it would be marketed as a "four-door coupe." And it sort of *was*. It was the same E-body platform as the Riviera, Eldorado and Toronado coupes, despite being given a K-body designation.
I don't mind certain two tone combinations but I think the Seville is one of those designs on which colour plays an important role. Unlike say a 59 Cadillac which looks great in any colour.
Oh yeah. Seville was ABSOLUTELY a four door coupe. It's the precise equivalent to the current AMG GT sedan but a little more honest as it was actually built on the same platform as the Eldo coupe.
Lol, the AMG GT coupe and four-door coupe being on completely different platforms was always amusing to me. And why did the AMG GT four-door coupe need to exist when they already had the CLS-Class, both of which were offshoots of the E-Class?
Just like your humble author in his thirties, MB is determined to fill every available hole in the market whether there's overlap with another one or not.
The problem was that bustle back Seville sold worse than the previous generation, and appealed to older customers, the exact opposite of what the '76 did (and what GM wanted). It was a retrograde step.
You're not wrong about the influence of head designers though. By the end Mitchell was out of allies and out of time, and the Ren-Cen was determined to keep the Tech Center on a much tighter leash than had been the case under Earl and Mitchell. That's why Kerhl promoted Irv Rybicki over Chuck Jordan (who was Mitchell's hand picked successor).
The bustle back was the better car (from an engineering standpoint) but the styling was love it or hate it for many. The ultimate snub to Mitchell was the removal of the Phantom from the 1977 internal styling show and the refusal of GM to allocate the funds to make the roller model into a working prototype. I wasn’t there and I’m still salty about it. https://www.shannons.com.au/club/news/retroautos/the-phantom-bill-mitchells-last-gift/
Open thread topic: I'm offering up my '06 Suburban to any ACF-er who's not afraid of a bit of mileage and worships at the altar of pre-AFM GM LS motors.
Basic Details:
Location: Indianapolis Indiana
Price: $3000
2006 Chevy Suburban 1500 LS 4WD 315k miles 5.3L
Auto/Part time 4WD with Low range. G80 Spin Locker
Runs down the road at 80+ straight and smooth with hot heat and meat locker AC. All accessories work.
I bought it from the previous owner who bought it as a 1yr old ex-Avis truck and drove 289k of the 315k miles in salt-free Colorado: basically zero rust, doubly so because I've been diligently undercoating the thing with Fluid Film and Wool Wax, and quite frankly the thing sits out most of the winter salt-road driving. He had rebuilt the transmission at 130k miles (the typical stock 4L60E lifespan), and it got rear end work at around 180k miles. When I bought the truck in 2020 I went through *ALL* the various wear items that needed doing: all new shocks all around, brakes front and rear, t-case encoder, full fluid service, water pump, belts and hoses, vent valve, oil pan gasket (oil pan was spotless inside thanks to the PO's diligent use of full synthetic). I dropped around $2k on it two springs ago to get the rear end redone (pinion bearing, axle bearings, brake backing plates) as well as the t-case serviced and rebuilt with a "case saver" for the NP 246. The truck is current rolling on studded General Altimax Arctics with lots of life left in them. Summer tires mounted on stock 16" alloys are Bridgestone Dueler LTH that will need to be replaced within 10k miles or so.
Minor annoyances:
-HVAC backlighting is out. Simple fix, I've simply been too lazy to go messing with it.
-"service tire monitor" message comes on every time you start the truck. Hit the cancel button on the steering wheel and forget all about it.
-A few dents and dings around the truck, most notably LH side of rear bumper. Can send photos to seriously interested parties
-minor drip from rear diff cover. This was resealed as part of the rebuild and I don't know if it's because I've been running it overfilled, could be solved with a new diff cover gasket presumably.
-Minor oil leak from back of the motor. Could this be the beginnings of a rear main seal leak? I dunno. I put a quart of Lucas Stop Leak in with every 5k synthetic oil change (Walmart supertech, AC Delco filter) and it stays dry and out of mind. Engine has excellent oil pressure, 30+ PSI hot idle running 5W-30.
I'd hop in and drive the thing to Alaska tomorrow given the chance. I trust it to haul my family down to the OBX from Indiana twice so I could drive it on the beach, out to Quebec last winter, countless trips out to NY and PA to visit family. Drive it like a granny on state highways and you will see an honest to god 20mpg out of this rig I kid you not. More typical highway speeds and mixed driving yields 17mpg or so.
Reason for sale is I simply never use the damn thing. Our minivan does fine with snow tires in our Indiana winters and now with a hitch will be able to handle occasional light motorcycle trailer duty, and that's about all I've used the Chevy for in the last several years. So it sits taking up space in the driveway and in the back of my mind, it's time to move on. Anyone seriously interested I think you can contact me through substack(?)
I'll also put you together with anyone who expresses interest in the comments.
Located in Indiana ?
Yep, NW suburbs of Indianapolis
I plan on coming to the supercross race at Indy March 16th, if you still have it by then I’ll look you up. I’ve been on the hunt for a full size tow vehicle that’s not losing the battle to rust.
By midwestern standards this thing is surgically clean underneath. All of the usual concerns: brake and fuel lines, soft frames, shot rockers, etc all a non-issue.
Let me know if you're still interested in checking the Suburban out. I was still waffling on selling it, kind of pissed at the thought of letting go of such a nice driving functional 4wd SUV for "only" $3k to the general public, but for a fellow ACFer I feel like at least it'd be going to a deserving person.
I deliberated on it for weeks since finding something clean is so difficult, but ultimately I think I need the functionality of a pickup bed. Thank you for checking back though.
No worries and understood!
I dont need a suburban but for 3k i kinda want a suburban. Wonder how mad the wife would be if this just replaced her almost brand new telluride…
I keep trying to get mine to commute in the thing atleast through pothole season. I had put the "nicer" Monroe shocks on the front. Between that and the bigger than stock 265/75R16 snow tires it absolutely bombs through bad roads. And no worries about some uninsured illegal rear ending you in traffic you probably wouldn't even feel a thing.
We probably wouldnt love them as much if they did what we wanted them to do. Thats what i tell myself at least.
Really disappointed that the timing is so completely wrong for me on this right now.
What’s the closest airport? Or meet at the Baruth estate? And Jack how about a 2009 Ford Fusion SE six-speed stick, 148k miles, to sweeten/complicate/sour the deal?
And does anyone involved need any quality masonry work done?
I could use some concrete and a little brick this summer, yeah! Let's talk.
I need some masonry work done. Doesn't have to be quality! My location probably doesn't make it a profitable job.
Swing by my place for some tuckpointing after you hit Scott’s, please.
You can fly right into Indy I'm on the NW side about a 30 minute drive away. Where has said Fusion lived its life (road salt wise)? Go on....
Baltimore, so . . . https://www.carid.com/2009-ford-fusion-rocker-panels-floors/replace-rocker-panel-591663708.html
I’m thinking Jack might want to give it this treatment https://avoidablecontact.substack.com/p/here-comes-the-singer-milan
And start his own spec series?
I'm just a wee bit North of Baltimore and could always stand to get yelled at by my girlfriend for buying something stupid.
Let's hear more about this Ford Fusion!
Let's hear the numbers on it!
Numbers, we don’t need no stinking numbers.
Me: "What do you want for it?"
Guy selling piece of junk (shrugging): "What'll you give me for it?"
Me (Scowling): "Buck fifty, dickhead."
Whoa, we're at most 2 counties apart. I'll ask the boss if we're in the market for a truck with a working transmission, as opposed to our fleet of disabled Fords and Toyotas. I prefer working out of pickups with open beds but right now that means cramming my surveying stuff in a single cab F350 XL 7.3 with a fuel tank taking up 30% of the bed.. If not I'm interested just buying it myself.
Would it be too much trouble to upload a few pictures to imgur or similar?
If it requires me to make a new account on some website I haven't used before... probably. I can email pics to seriously interested folks.
Fair enough. My dad is looking for a tow/road trip vehicle and this sounded up his alley. I didn't want to waste your/Jack's time if it wasn't something he was interested in.
The 5.3 will safely tow a camper at 90% GCVWR but most owners didn't like having to slow down on any rise on the highway due to a lack of grunt.
All he has is an ATV and a 6x12 trailer. Maybe two on my 18’ open in a pinch. This is more than enough.
It would handle that with ease. I’ve towed a few 3500lb ish cars on twin axle u haul trailers, two 500-600lb motorcycles at the same time with the larger twin axle uhaul utility trailer. Can barely tell it’s there. I put it into tow/haul mode in hilly areas and I like how it sets the shift points up.
Well give him the basic specs/price/miles and if it sounds like something up his alley we can coordinate on pics
TLDR: I’m out of the Suburban game so open to other bidders (but do have the Fusion; semi-detailed proposal to follow).
Checked with my mason friend who needed a replacement for his 2002 Chevy suburban 1500 5.3 L with a blown 4LE60 transmission, unbeknownst to me he’s getting another truck tomorrow, he’s been borrowing our beater Volvo wagon. We’re six hours to the East of Baruthland
Hey as long as Stellantis keeps fire saleing 4xes I’ll probably keep leasing the pieces of shit. Are they great, no, are they reliable and economical, also no, but they’re the most interesting you can lease for my (very little) money.
so .... what exactly is a "fire sale" lease payment? and how much does one also have to put down up front?
anything listing for $60k and not selling for $20k+ off that isn't "fire sale" in my book.
It’s a lease. Taxes/fees down + first month’s payment. Conventional wisdom is 1% of MSRP at $0 down is the target. My current 4xe is $60k sticker, $420/mo lease. On line I call the one I’m thinking of ordering at just over $70k, payment online is $515ish, I figure it will be that or a little less. Takes into account the $7500 tax credit, and the online calc wants a 10% down payment I assume as a discount.
Might need to call my old Ram sales guy about one for those kind of low low prices. I'm leasing a similar MSRP priced 22' f-150 also for $420/mo (nothing down) that's due back in late April. I don't really want a truck anymore, and have no passion for just about anything south of a 6 figure MSRP currently on the market new. Tempting even if stellantis reliability is hot garbage.
Check leasehackr if your local dealer doesn’t want to play ball, lots won’t. I used a broker for $400, Clutch. He’s on leasehackr.
One of the main, and possibly the only, perks of living in the Midwest is knowing at least one person that will give up an Employee pin # for a nice steak dinner. Cheaper than a broker :D I have always liked GC's and can't beat the price to rinse and repeat after 2 years.
"The Stellantis company is not happy with me. That's okay, I'll still keep leasing that garbage."
I’ve been toying with getting a Wrangler forever, but I’d rather have a 2 door and don’t really want the 4xe. But the 4xe is now the only way to get the full time transfer case, and availability is better in general.
Have you had many 4xe specific issues with yours?
Yeah. Early on had an issue which needed a software patch. Then I had a coolant heater pump go out which caused the EV system and the HVAC system to be inop for 2 months. Currently I’m under recall which means I can’t park the Jeep inside or charge it. Probably a nothingburger, but “unexplained fires are a matter for the courts.” Jeep has 26.6k miles on it. But it’s a first year Stellantis vehicle, I expected all of this. It’s a great least and a shitty buy, especially since IMO most people have no business buying a $60-70k+ vehicle if they aren’t over the income cap that makes them ineligibility for the tax credit.
“Can’t park the Jeep inside or charge it”
Fuck that. I’ll stick to the gas model or not bother altogether. That hassle isn’t worth the savings.
You do you, I won’t try to talk anyone into one of these, but I’m part of a fairly small recall (32k vehicles) based on 6-8 actual fires, of which 4-5 might have been due to crappy aftermarket accessory wiring. I’m following the rules because it’s painless and the downside is catastrophic, but I have zero thought my Jeep is actually going to catch fire. But I for sure understand why others don’t want the potential headache.
Listen, my Mom had both the sedan Seville and the bustleback, both in metallic blue, so I can damn well drive my soulless Porsches now cause I did my time.
Now THAT is what I call street cred!
Back in the day I worked in an exclusive neighborhood gas station. I bought a lot of cars that the locals didn't think were worth fixing. I mean cars that were only 4 or 5 years old. I did much better on the resale of the busleback Sevilles by hundreds to almost thousands of dollars.
Because people love them, and always HAVE loved them.
They made everything else look timid.
i think the funniest part about CDG is that he advocates for buying crappy used cars on his twitter page and actively chastises people who want to do anything other than drive a 15k used camry. its right in line with the inability of auto journalists to provide real car buying advice or opinions, except his preferred line of projection is to try and "bucket of crabs" everyone into driving the same 6-10 year old japanese appliances. i wonder if perhaps he stands to benefit from people buying old cars that may need constant replacement and service vs new ones.... hmmmm.....
The "it only makes sense to buy used" segment of the internet amuses me. Deprecation
with new car can surely be a mother fucker but with a used car the cost of parts and repairs as well as the subsequent possibly of not having a car for a few days because it's in the shop can be way way worse. For context, I should mention that in the past I have worked as car salesman for both new and used cars, a service advisor and as a counter person at an auto parts store so I do have slightly more than cursory knowledge on this subject.
"it only needs to get you reliably point A to point B!!!! anything else is throwing money away!!!!" riiiight reminds me of all the money i could save by eating gruel, rice, and insects for every meal as long as it hits all my macros
It’s scary how many people think having a diet consisting exclusively of beans and rice and driving a POS used car till the wheels falls off is the best way to become financially secure. I’d rather die penniless than live that way.
i think unfortunately it says more about the financial situation of an increasingly large subset of people where $300 of unexpected expenses in a month is a major problem. but agree.
Yeah but a lot of THOSE people are doing whatever they want, within reason. The performative savings stuff is the domain of people making middle class income but determined to retire at 55.
And wtf are they going to do with those 30 years? Even if you are dull enough to like golf, it's surely got to pall after a while...
I’ve read a fair amount of stuff from the FIRE community. They tend to fall into one of two camps:
-People who have a serious hobby they are obsessed with and desperate to devote more time to, especially if it’s a free hobby like gardening or reading library books or bird watching or something
-people who are painfully socially awkward and/or on some kind of spectrum who find the very act of interacting with people horrible.
Me personally, all my hobbies are at least moderately expensive, and so retiring early would preclude my participating in them. Plus I’ve got the golden handcuffs of a very nice lifestyle that I’m committing to maintaining for myself and my family, so wage slave it is.
All that money and nothing to do with it. A lifetime of frugality isnt gonna turn the switch at fifty five. If you even see fifty five. Im more of a saver than a spender but im not living off beeans and rice
I want to "retire" to running a used motorcycle shop and/or driving a pre-EDL big rig as an owner operator by the time I'm 45.
That's true, although any 15-year-old car is a gamble and could incur $300 (or much more) in expenses at a moment's notice. Just because it's a Camry doesn't mean it won't break. In particular, the 2007+ 2.4-liter Camry is prone to rampant oil-burning at higher mileages, and no one talks about it. I steered my cousin away from an overpriced 2009 Camry LE (and into a 2007 Buick Lucerne CXL with the 3800) for that very reason.
I imagine that the Lucerne would be smoother and quieter as well, so long as the build quality is good and squeaks and rattles are at a minimum.
08-09 are the oil burning years for the Toyota 2.4s IIRC. 10-11 is a sweet spot of the new 2.5+6spd in the facelifted XV40 body (you could get that handsome dark forest green color too), but before the dumb "flex-lock" torque converter programming that can chew up 12-14 Camry transmissions on cars that see a lot of low speed driving (several TSBs and a quiet transmission warranty extension to 8yrs/150k miles). Toyota is starting to stumble with increasing frequency, unfortunately.
Beaters are Russian roulette, especially on long commutes.
I've lost jobs to absence playing that game.
Dave Ramsey's bullshit.
Live on instant ramen & rainwater and work three jobs till you go to the ER with a life-threatening nutritional deficiency.
You DO want to get out of debt, RIGHT?
It's not bullshit to the adult-sized children who have 4 times their income in consumer debt. His advice is for the children too stupid to come home when the streetlights go on.
Life is all about tradeoffs. Its not bullshit if it works, when not taken to the extreme like your example.
You're right. Life is about tradeoffs.
The big one here is that getting out of debt is not supposed to be some all-consuming, every-penny-counts quest. The modern economy runs on debt, and Ramsey's advice - well, his BRAND - is unrealistic much of the time.
I'm not a Dave Ramsey aficionado but if you're at the point you need Daves advice, you probably really need it. Some people just spend way too much money? My definition of "Way too much money" is "More than you make" Don't buy luxury items at 30% interest. Guys making 500k a year with huge credit card balances. Guy who gets a new job and spends his first paycheck before he gets it.
What galls me is that he got HIMSELF into trouble, decided it was the DEBT that did it rather than his ambition and went all evangelical on the notion that Debt Is Bad.
The people who give this sort of advice has never worked on their car all night just to make it to work the next morning and it shows.
I promised myself years ago that I’d never put myself in that sort of position. Even now, I’d love to sell my truck and daily a pre-emissions diesel but that’s too much of a headache to deal with.
My solution is to run two cars and one of them MUST be Japanese. And if all else fails, nick the wife's car.
Yep.
For work alone, I drive like 20k + miles per year. I hesitate to own anything without a warranty that I have to depend on to make a living every day.
I don’t make smart choices in cars, but I’m also not trying to drive 20k miles up and down busy interstates in a 15 year old Camry just to save a buck.
For that reason alone, I’m probably selling my beloved Bronco for something less stupid instead of getting a “work beater.” Just no economical sense in it,
I used to commute ~80 miles per day. There was no way I was suffering through that in some cramped beater and spending my weekends working on it.
The truck is paid off now. My commute 1/3 of what
It used to be. I figured in two more years I’ll have ~120k on it and it’ll be time for a new one.
I drove fully depreciated used jaguars, paid cash. In hindsight I should have borrowed money for a manual C5 or C6. More reliable, more efficient, and lots of residual value.
Yeah, but you got to drive Jaguars. That's a win in my book.
The seats are very nice. Truly needed back in the day when I was obsessed with squatting 400
And the supercharged cars are very fast
Jack summed it up nicely in You Gotta Be Rich to Own a Cheap Car:
"On the Internet, everybody has a six-figure savings account and a seven-figure retirement account. Everybody pays cash for everything while simultaneously dumping massive amounts of money into investments. They’re all the Millionaires Next Door and they know more about money and investing and prudent decision-making than Warren Buffet and Sam Walton combined. In the real world, people are victimized by everything from economic downturns to poor decisions they made when they were too young to know any better. In the real world, most families are just getting by and the rainy-day money they’ve saved rarely measures up to the endless tide of rainy days.
For those families, a new-car payment is a burden — but it’s one they can predict and live with. It sucks to “throw away” $300 or $400 every month, but it’s never a surprise and in exchange they have freedom from surprises. They have freedom from the surprise of losing two days of work or being stuck with their children by the side of a fifteen-degree freeway all night or having to diagnose mechanical issues using a cellphone flash and whatever conventional wisdom their parents bothered to impart when they weren’t off doing their own thing. They know that every month they are exchanging a fixed sum of money for certainty and reliability."
Sincerely - a guy who spent all last night replacing the starter in a 2008 Ranger
We may think David Tracey is cool but he doesn't have kids!
Also, speaking of internet experts, this week I was pleased to read that annual equivalent returns on Cathie 'Tesla stock is a tech stock' Wood's Ark Invest are 2%. I am impressed by her commitment but just because you are prepared to back your babbling with money, doesn't make your babblings fact. Even Mary Barra is doing better than 2%!
I spent every college break/holiday in college repairing my (at the time) 20 year old car. Great, great lesson. Granted, since it was a 1974 Buick, had I had the money, I could have probably put it in an okay shape, and drive it for another 20 years. But being a broke college student, I could only repair what broke, when it broke. Not a great recipe for reliability, when you have to drive 70-80 miles/day. I walked the last few miles home more than once.
I know it's a typo but modern cars unironically have features that deprecated and obsolete.
My Highlander's 3G cell connection comes to mind.
The bluetooth stereo in my '13 CX-5 doesn't communicate properly with my phone anymore. The shuffle setting is only set at a whim. I have no control.
My Iphone 12 pairing with my Audi always had quirks. Work gave me a new Iphone 15 and those quirks disappeared. "Gave me..." I pay for it... At least it's deductible.
Here's people thinking computers are going to control us through 'AI' when they actually already control us with their limitations and their shortcomings.
Before the pandemic, when I purchased a new car, the problem I ran into was that I could finance a brand new car at 1 percent and a 3 year old car was at 5 percent. On the total life of the loan I might save 1K on buying used, but if I purchased new, I got the full manufacture warranty.
The math is different now, but appreciate the memories.
I was too young to go to that Olympia show in '75, but my friends older brother had an AMC Gremlin X that we rode around in listening to FM rock in Detroit. Good times.
Ashamed to admit, but a whole later I was old enough and took a date to see Emerson, Lake and Palmer at Cobo. Prog rock, that was me then.
saw ELO in the Silverdome in 1979.
Nice, get a little Roundabout.
Jethro Tull at Cobo about then.
I saw Tull at the State Fair Coliseum on their tour to support Aqualung, just as they were breaking big. Edger Winter's White Trash and a local band were the supporting acts. General admission, we got there straight from school so were able to stake out places right in front of the stage, near one of the PA columns. I couldn't hear in my right ear for three days after that show.
Queen for “The Game” tour. Still the best concert I’ve ever been to. Never got to see Zep unfortunately…
That must have been a hell of a show.
It was and I’m still surprised I was allowed to go!
The 70s sucked mostly but some bands knew how to put on a show without a dozen dancers and lasers.
Not including Parliament/Funkadelic
A dozen dancers and a spaceship prop!
Eddie Hazel doesn't get the credit he deserves. Maggot Brain is one of the great guitar solos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOKn33-q4Ao
That was recorded in '70-'71. Do you think it might have influenced Neil Young's Cortez the Killer, recorded in '75?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uX9k9aoX6gk
Yeah, it's true, the 70s sucked (especially in England) but we didn't know any better. And the music was good, so it just floated along somehow.
I enjoyed the "Jazz" tour here in Nashville in 1978. The "Live Killers" album sums up most of the show.
No doubt! I remember getting that record and discovering the wonderful poster.
Later my mom went through all my records after watching a Phil Donahue thing on backwards masking. It was a vinyl massacre but that one snuck by for some reason.
I saw Heart at the Pacific Colosseum in Vancouver in 1979. That band rocked hard.
And holy cow they were loud.
Heart just announced a tour with Cheap Trick opening! Caveat Emptor.
Cheap Trick is still pretty good! Why, I saw them just...
17 years ago!
What does it say that it feels like yesterday to me? They were younger then than I am now. OF COURSE they were fine.
Robin Zander is underrated as a lead singer. Living in Chicago, Cheap Trick was always a fun band. Just great power pop.
That Seville coupe just shows how much fun this country used to exude in the 1950s through the 1980s. The Seville was rich people fun, but at the same time normal Americans bought cars with wild colors, wore interesting clothes, and acted as humorous, fun people and displayed an enjoyment for life . Now everyone aspires to a bland coolness, which is totally boring because it’s the same across the board. That’s why cars are all black, white, and grey for the past few decades.
Like Buster Douglas, Cheap Trick will never be forgotten because for one night in Tokyo, they were the absolute best in the world at what they did. Fleeting greatness is still greatness.
WRIF and CKLW!!!
Oh yeah. WABX for 10 minute Zappa songs.
The original ABX Air Aces crew with Dave Dixon, later on WDET was terrific. Dixon, btw, co-wrote I Dig Rock N' Roll Music which was a modest hit by Peter, Paul & Mary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rOTKeoAs7M
The RIF—“BABY!!”
We could get The RIF down in Toledo, but everywhere I ever worked had FM104.7 WIOT... WI... O... T on their radios. The last time I heard that station it seemed like they were still playing the same 25 songs they were playing when I last lived there. My friends and I listened to 89X or 106.5 The Buzz (a short-lived rock station) when we weren't listening to CDs or mix tapes. Hahahaha, mix tapes!
Spot on about WRIF and WIOT. It's pretty much all the tunes your dad listened to in 1985 with some Pearl Jam and Nickleback thrown in.
I miss 89X dearly, but it was pretty bad near the end. In their heyday, the station did a lot to promote the local scene and expose people to new music. They carried on with what WRIF stopped caring to do in about 1986.
Absolutely. I heard 89X just before its demise and it was a shadow of itself. But then again, all the people who had run it were older or gone, as well as all its listeners, so perhaps it had simply run its course. Younger generations have to find and develop new stuff on their own.
I never heard what happened to 89X, but I know that if the station is still on the air, it’s not playing the format it did in the past.
WXKR, 94.5, is a bit more like classic WIOT. You have to remember, though, that in the 1990s the whole classic rock format bifurcated into grunge and rap, someone correct me if I’m wrong.
In another twenty years, they might not have enough of an audience for classic rock stations.
Hell, it bothers me that the “oldies” stations are playing ‘80s music! 😲
My first concert was in 1968 when I was 14. Headliner was Herman’s Hermits (Henry the Eighth). Fronting them was Blues Magoo. Warm up band was The Who, who destroyed their instruments at the end of their routine. It blew our innocent little Teeny Bopper minds! In hindsight, Is that not the most ironically inverse band line-up you could conceive of?
Hendrix opened for the Monkees.
You win!
I saw Steely Dan open for Cheech and Chong.
How could you tell?
that 2dr Seville is butt freaking ugly should be driven straight to a landfill. plus its got circa-1980 innards - ugh.
100%
Can’t believe someone cut up a perfectly good Seville to do that
Couple of random thoughts...That Zeppelin photo is amazing to me because every face you see is engaged in a REAL experience. Something they likely never forgot and tried to recreate many times, I'm sure. The current audience fillers don't have time to pay attention to the show as they're too engaged in setting up photos of themselves showing how "better" their experience is than yours. And missing the point entirely.
I didn't realize Tyrese (or anyone else) was still putting out old school R&B. Not a bad tune even if something seems a bit off from the authentic 70's sound (synthesizer maybe?). I miss the brass of so many older songs - maybe someone can fire up some Tower of Power sound one day. Who knows.
Flipping channels and Beyond Thunderdome happened to be on. I forgot that Aunty Entity had a sax player to set the mood when she is doing job interviews.
I'm not so sure people are going to look back. Mainly because so many of these 'artists' don't have any real talent. The people setting up the machinery, the electronics, the autotune, the editors, the effects people, the folks running the playback - that's were the talent is. The singers can't sing and sound like shit (remember those two black actors and all the trouble they got in for lip-syncing, when nowadays all of the pop artists do it?) and they're all replaceable like the girls in any Japanese girl band or the guys in any boy band.
There are so many more people in the world today than there was in 75, that to stand out, to really be remembered, you have to not only be special on multiple levels, but there has to be something about you that people WANT to remember.
Everything is hype now and people know it. So they don't really attach themselves to it.
Yeah, to me, they were good if years from now, people occasionally want to hear it or remember it.
Random lookup. Top 40, June 1974
1 6 BILLY, DON’T BE A HERO –•– Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods (ABC)-9 (1 week at #1)
2 3 YOU MAKE ME FEEL BRAND NEW –•– The Sylistics (Avco)-13
3 5 SUNDOWN –•– Gordon Lightfoot (Reprise)-10
4 2 THE STREAK –•– Ray Stevens (Barnaby)-10
5 1 BAND ON THE RUN –•– Paul McCartney and Wings (Apple)-9
6 4 DANCING MACHINE –•– Jackson 5 (Motown)-14
7 11 BE THANKFUL FOR WHAT YOU GOT –•– William DeVaughn (Roxbury)-7
8 8 THE ENTERTAINER –•– Marvin Hamlisch (MCA)-13
9 10 FOR THE LOVE OF MONEY –•– The O’Jays (Philadelphia International)-10
10 9 MIDNIGHT AT THE OASIS –•– Maria Muldaur (Reprise)-17
11 15 IF YOU LOVE ME (Let Me Know) –•– Olivia Newton-John (MCA)-10
12 7 HELP ME –•– Joni Mitchell (Asylum)-14
13 17 HOLLYWOOD SWINGING –•– Kool and the Gang (De-Lite)-9
14 12 MY GIRL BILL –•– Jim Stafford (MGM)-9
15 14 THE LOCO-MOTION –•– Grand Funk (Capitol)-15
16 21 HAVEN’T GOT TIME FOR THE PAIN –•– Carly Simon (Elektra)-6
17 16 THE SHOW MUST GO ON –•– Three Dog Night (Dunhill)-14
18 20 YOU WON’T SEE ME / HE THINKS I STILL CARE –•– Anne Murray (Capitol)-9
19 13 OH VERY YOUNG –•– Cat Stevens (A&M)-14
20 18 I WON’T LAST A DAY WITHOUT YOU –•– The Carpenters (A&M)-10
21 24 SAVE THE LAST DANCE FOR ME –•– The DeFranco Family Featuring Tony DeFranco (20th Century)-7
22 29 ON AND ON –•– Gladys Knight and the Pips (Buddah)-4
23 45 ROCK THE BOAT –•– The Hues Corporation (RCA)-4
24 30 I’M COMING HOME –•– The Spinners (Atlantic)-5
25 28 ONE HELL OF A WOMAN –•– Mac Davis (Columbia)-12
26 23 (I’ve Been) SEARCHIN’ SO LONG –•– Chicago (Columbia)-14
27 35 THE AIR THAT I BREATHE –•– The Hollies (Epic)-9
28 31 SON OF SAGITTARIUS –•– Eddie Kendricks (Tamla)-6
29 22 DON’T YOU WORRY ‘BOUT A THING –•– Stevie Wonder (Tamla)-11
30 37 IF YOU WANNA GET TO HEAVEN –•– The Ozark Mountain Daredevils (A&M)-9
31 38 RIKKI DON’T LOSE MY NUMBER –•– Steely Dan (ABC)-6
32 40 SIDESHOW –•– Blue Magic (Atco)-5
33 43 ROCK AND ROLL HEAVEN –•– The Righteous Brothers (Haven)-4
34 62 ROCK YOUR BABY –•– George McCrae (T.K.)-3
35 19 I’M IN LOVE –•– Aretha Franklin (Atlantic)-11
36 25 JUST DON’T WANT TO BE LONELY –•– The Main Ingredient (RCA)-20
37 60 ANNIE’S SONG –•– John Denver (RCA)-3
38 26 BENNIE AND THE JETS –•– Elton John (MCA)-18
39 47 TRAIN OF THOUGHT –•– Cher (MCA)-4
40 27 TSOP (The Sound Of Philadelphia) –•– MFSB Featuring the Three Degrees (Philadelphia International)-16
Ray Stevens?! I didn’t think he had enough of a following to hit the charts.
Yeah, I just remember him from that dumb song when I was nine. I looked up his discography and he’s put out 50 studio albums, 125 singles, 2 of which hit #1. Plus a couple of Grammys. Who knew!
That's 21 killer songs and 19 filler by my estimate -- and everyone else's would differ, but I bet the approximate proportions would be the same.
Couldn't say that about today's music.
I only know two or three of these songs by name (I was born in 1981) but I'll bet I'd know a lot more if I heard them, and I recognize the names of almost every artist on the list.
As evidence of the "people won't remember this stuff" one could look at, say, a Lizzo performance and compare it to this one by Prince:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNrAFb3I2js
Not hard to guess which one people will look at in 20 years and say "Damn."
The artists have a completely different sort of talent. I never fail to be amazed at The Chainsmokers business strategy. Song to catch everyone's attention immediately followed up with a solid album. They knew they weren't great singers so they collaborated with great singers which also served to promote them to different audiences.
Both guys also have non music ventures going on in the background too. And mad work ethic even more than talent.
But it's not something anybody is going to remember 20 years from now.
I've sold over a million copies of my books so far. I have a lot of fans. A lot. I understand 'lasting fame' and all that. I see it around me in my industry. I know that 20 years after I'm gone, for all the books I've sold, for all of the #1 best sellers, for all of the money, that nobody is going to remember me.
It's a sobering thought.
We can't all be Tolkien. I couldn't write a book if you gave me a billion dollars and thirty years to do it. You are ahead of the game.
I get your point.
There's a lot of good hard work but not necessarily outstanding talent.
Is the amount of people putting hard work into 'the process' swamping talent?
Actually there ISN'T a lot of 'good hard work'. There are a bunch of lazy ass people with no talent who are using machines to sound talented. Or who are being pushed on us by our betters so they can make money.
It's the amount of lazy-ass talentless hacks who are 'swamping the talent'. The people who think they can 'get rich quick' with zero effort, zero talent, who cheat at every opportunity.
Every one of these 'VC' funded scams stinks of money laundering. Grifters gonna grift.
It's not really money laundering. It is a grift. If you want to launder money, get a chain of Pizza places
Nail salons
Vancouver condos…
I was 15 when this photo was taken, what you say about the radio being our lifeline to what was happening is so accurate, and this word which I can’t pronounce.......this longing for something that can never be replaced, repeated, only viewed as something that happened, things that we did, and the things that we did with 6x9 speakers and ampex tapes to get music into our cars, the way we haphazardly installed a tapedeck/receiver into the dash, with all the wires just dangling from under the dash...... we would have the biggest smiles.
Yes, I miss that!
"This word I can't pronounce" is Jack filling some space with a little pretension (and don't we love him for it?). Welsh! Really? Has he been listening to BBC Radio 6? I am sure he may say it is a fine and ancient Celtic tongue, but I stopped at a cafe one afternoon in Bala (mid mid Wales) a little chilled on my bike and discovered that the Welsh word for sausage is apparently "sosej." Hmm...
I am pretty sure his upbringing was higher end middle class, but I can’t picture him listening to the BBC, love your comment!
BBC Radio 6 is a music station that (I think) is available on the web. It has quite a bit of Cerys Matthews from Catatonia presenting, she of the fabulous Welsh voice ("you give me road rrrrage...") so I just wondered if he had stumbled across the word there. A wild surmise, I will confess, but we mustn't allow too much detailed diligence and adherence to truth to spoil the fun here, must we?
I am going to have to find this!
Have you heard the joke about the drunk Scotsman and the two Welsh women?
No, pretty sure not. But only know two jokes and can only remember one at a time, so go on, share it!
Two big girls walk into a Edinburgh bar. They order drinks, in a thick accent.
"You two ladies from Ireland?" asks the bartender.
Offended, one of them replies "Wales!"
"Oh I'm so sorry," says the bartender, "Are you two whales from Ireland?"
Very good. Apposite, too; my wife and I were in a pub a few years back and a party of office ladies arrived for a Christmas dinner. They were a very jolly, friendly lot; but small they were not. I remember being struck by the thought that if I were a young man these days my choices would be a lot more circumscribed than they were in the dim, dark 1970s. Let's just say that I wouldn't have wanted to be wobbling around London with one on the back of my Norton.
Should we ever meet (a thing devoutly to be wished but, alas, of low probability), I shall tell you the joke that I can remember. It requires performance rather than print and an audience inured to insensitivity.
I was also 15 at the time. However, after a little incident with wire hanging low under the dash I became more of a professional which led to my first career as a custom stereo system installer. By 18 I had cars from all over in our shop and not to date myself but the CES show was still in Chicago. One of my best memories is a new BMW that Clifford Alarms sent me for the show. I definitely miss it!!!!
After two or three installs, I did learn to keep it a little cleaner of the wiring, no incidents, just to keep it neat.
"Feel free, if you like, to discuss why almost all the cheapest leases for Feb 2024 are EVs, using our handy “comment section"
Well...... I guess Reality is a Bitch. Also, "You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time. But you can't fool ALL the people ALL of the time.
If someone wants an EV by all means buy it, live with it and regret it. All to your individual regret. Do not presume to force me to play stupid and believe EV's are viable from an operational or cost standpoint. In another 50 years, maybe. The idiots that buy EV's thinking they will be a 100% equivalent replacement for their ICE vehicle are suckers. I mean that in every pejorative sense you can think of. Forcing the Free Market to abandon its principals based on some BS man made climate change falsehood is at minimum stupid or a fraud. Range, Charging infrastructure and cost ( subsidized or unsubsidized you pay either way) are just first tier disadvantages. The cost to build out the required charging infrastructure alone would be a huge negative impact to our society.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
"They're not buying our garbage! It's not fair!"
I’m sure it was with some hyperbole, but the GM of a Caddy store just today told me he hasn’t sold a single Lyriq that has not come back for repairs within 90 days.
Most mechanical issues can be figured out by any competent shop. Good luck having an electric gremlin solved without replacing many expensive electrical parts in an attempt to solve a problem .
How ironiq!
Comment
Of
The
Day
Ironiq - I’m going to use that for my startup which will retrofit ICE powertains into bricked EVs.
I've been thinking about this but it makes even better sense with formery-ICE-powered but unrepairable cars, with nice interiors and curb appeal. Thinking of any out of warranty Land Rover as an example.
This guy has the right idea https://vid.puffyan.us/watch?v=updAPTfswRI
I thought Hyundai made those
On NPR they were pointing out the CAFE angle, which is something I haven't been pissed off about recently enough. Of course they were lamenting that <s>forcing EVs down dealer throats</s>selling EVs allowed the automakers to sell those awful white trash pickup trucks without running afoul of CAFE. They were hard to follow but I think their solutions was to end CAFE or just ban ICE or something.
CAFE killed a lot of people who were forced into small cars. End CAFE and let the market decide.
I wonder ... Comment like this is something that should be like-able more than once. Is this crappy commenting system Jack's secret plot to get people to sign up more than once for ACF, so they can like certain comments more than once?
Whoa! Does this kind of thinking qualify one as a "journalist" these days? Wh...!!!
I’m convinced CAFE is why Jeep/Stellantis is blowing out 4xes. It takes a lot of neutered PHEVs to offset Rams and Jeep 492s and Charger/Challenger Hellcats and the like.
I really wanted a wagoneer instead of the telluride. My wife did not which oddly agreed with my wallet for the first time ever.
Tough choice, they're both stylish cars that prioritize looks over durability.
I didn't really push it too hard because the cheapest Wagoneer is probably 10k more than the most expensive telluride and I didn't want the cheapest Wagoneer. Jeep throws more money at you than Kia does but this was still in the "Supply chain" crisis. I'd like to think Kia will be more reliable than Jeep. All I head from my Honda friend is "Can't believe you got a Kia when you could've got a Pilot' The KIA is nicer than the Pilot. Plus, and here's the big thing, my wife didn't want a Pilot. So far, no issues with the KIA. Crosses fingers...
The brand new for 2023 Pilot is a big improvement over the last generation. Stylistically it is more in line with a Telluride than, for example, a Highlander.
I am hoping the pendulum is swinging back to boxy for these 3 row CUVs, if the new Pilot or Grand Highlander are any indication of the trend.
Fair comment perhaps, but name a more reliable 3 row that doesn't suck. All ford products out, Pilot out because it sucks, GM products out (suck and not necessarily reliable), Mazda CX-90 out, Highlander ugly even if reliable, Jeep JGC-L lovely looking but a service bay queen, and on and on
how GD hard is it to make a reliable car. We had this problem solved in the 1980s with my grandfathers chevrolet caprice. The number one "reliability first" car segment should be minivans and 3 rows yet (in the case of the latter at least) its the opposite.
ICE reliability has effectively been legislated out.
Reliable private transportation is being actively outlawed, heck.
Zey want us all in boxcars.
"In the battle between platitudes and physics, physics is undefeated" - Doomberg
The only conventional option on the list is a Silverado 1500 and probably a 4 cylinder at that. That has to make some of the EV options much more palatable.
The 4cylinder is deeply discounted to the 5.3 per my friend that just got one. They are 1 year flippers so he’s not too worried about long term reliability.
I could see owning an EV, but it would be strictly a commuter, so a third car. I can't see paying that much money for a luxury like that. I have an old beater pickup and it's much more useful.
I cannot fathom how short these peoples memories are. Dieselgate was less than 10 years ago and we're back in the loop of manufacturers making cars to suit government regulations that they lobbied for to get customers to buy the cars they were making to suit government regulations.
The reason EV leases are so cheap is that the leasing company will factor in the tax credit(s) in the lease payment. Which is preferable to you having to deal with that -- and the associated income limitations/restrictions thereof.
Second is that for EVs, leasing make sense over buying. Given the current uncertainty of battery life, replacement cost, and diminishing range over time/temp, do you *really* want to own a seven year old EV? Lease it for three years and it's the leasing company's problem.
When/If Toyota decides to enter the EV game and there are 15 year old EV Camry's clogging the streets, *then* I'll be interested in buying vs leasing.
Assuming the Free Market were functioning properly ......... and your assumptions were correct....... would seem that leases for EV's would be more expensive? You do realize that dealers are loaded with unsold EV's currently ?? Lease em'' cheap. at least get some kinda cash flow coming the right way.
the problem with music is that anyone can make it
this is also what makes it interesting
i still hate looking at bad bunny
Bad Bunny represents the absolute worst of global culture.
and yet he exists
anyway say what you want about taylor swift but at least shes a cutie
What?!
Her eyes are too wide apart and too high on her face.
Although i suppose that means she'll be able to judge that braking point just right.
She is quite tall.
Not a disqualifier in my book but a lot of men feel differently.
She ticks every one of my boxes. She just does it for me. So do short irish chicks with big boobs and wide hips though... so maybe my type is "Breathing and not overweight"
just more of her to love
might be onto something there
look at max verstappen
hes basically a prey animal
Is this because he's banging a Kardashian, or is that merely the threshold one must achieve in order to bang a Kardashian?
Oh, I didn't even know that.
I was going strictly on the music.
I wouldn't know he exists if not for the inescapable onslaught of Kardashian updates that masquerades as "news" these days.
I couldn't tell you who or what Bad Bunny looks or sounds like, but then I couldn't tell you any of Taylor Swift's songs either.
Then you’ll really enjoy 6ix9ine.
Hey Jack! Whatdabout that west coast meet-up?
Gotta figure out when to do it.
Starting with his idiotic stage name.
I assume it was "Malo Conejo" in his native tongue.
First metric, now Spanish?
Why do rappers choose ridiculous criminal aliases - I mean stage names. How bad could your real name be?
Unless it's like Aloysius Pferdscheisse or something.
George Dorsey found success with the stage name of Engelbert Humperdinck, described as "one of the finest middle-of-the-road balladeers around" which is practically the definition of damning with faint praise.
The harmonica player in the J. Geils Band goes by Magic Dick. If you birthname was Richard Salwitz, you might go by Magic Dick too.
Wait, he changed it FROM George Dorsey to THAT?
Did he lose a bet or something?
"Fly Lesbian Seagull" was one of his best.
Car dealership guy sounds like he has the kind of ego to be Michael Karesh with money
That's more frightening than the Cloverfield monster.
I get your point but I don't think Michael has ever frightened anybody in his life. Sure, he's a passive aggressive little shit but in any kind of real confrontation he'd fold up like a Samsonite chair. You know the kid that got picked last when boys choose up sides in a game? He got picked before Michael. The kid who played right field in Little League? Mike was second string to him.
I was never anything but nice to him and he went out of his way to be an asshole. What kind of a threat was I to him?
Well I'm still waiting for that lawsuit he promised me and I told him to file, so.
I was getting the same vibe.
It frustrates me to scan ttac archives for cars I might be interested in and find Karesh's byline. That dude hoarded access.
never underestimate a leach's ability to try to push the free advertisement angle whenever they can.
It’s funny because that Seville (and its neo-classical ilk) were the result of Detroit clinging to the past when the market was changing rapidly beneath it. The irony of course is the bustle-back Seville was Mitchell’s last car before he retired, and it replaced a Seville that was much more modern and international in its design. Perhaps it’s not so strange for a man in uncertain times and nearing the end of his tenure to fall into the nostalgia trap.
Sir, I feel attacked.
*Hops on an XS1100, peels out and heads to the massage parlor*
It’s done from a place of love. I mock because I care.
We all do.
Aww you guys
*sobs quietly*
I will would welcome some design nostalgia over today’s automotive blandness.
My GM driving days have been over for 25 years now, but a bustle back Cadillac could get me to consider buying GM again.
True. Also, whatever anyone thinks of the gen. 2/bustleback Seville, it's a helluva lot better than the gen. 3, which was easily the worst one. I simply cannot stand the formal roofline, combined with the stubby C-pillar. The proportions were all wrong.
The bustleback was also one of the last implementations of GM's odd FWD Unified Powerplant Package (UPP), in which the engine was mounted longitudinally and sat beside the also longitude-mounted transmission, with the two being linked by a very heavy chain. And I'm a UPP nerd and admirer. I was brought home from the hospital in a 1985 Riviera with the 307, which also had the UPP and was a platform sister to the bustleback Seville (though the Seville continued to receive the K-body designation).
Put another way: "You down with UPP?! Yeah, you know me!"
UPP
How shall I explain it
A motor home contains it
That's just proof of it's versatility. I'm not a motorhomes kind of guy. I'm more a hotels with cocktail bars kind of guy. But I HAD to stay in a motorhome, one of those GMC bad boys would absolutely be it.
I'd like to think that had I been an early Boomer, my driveway would have an Eldorado and a short wheelbase GMC motor home, both in that Sixties olive green.
You can stay in a lot of Nice Hotel rooms for the cost of a motorhome. And they depreciate like a rock. If I'm gonna throw a lot of money on a quickly depreciating assets, it's gonna be a boat.
It's probably an outlier but the GMC Motorhome has retained plenty of value. There's an active community of collectors and enthusiasts. When I've written about them the articles get a lot of traffic.
Don't own a boat. Be the hero who brings beer to the boat.
I currently glom on dad's boat but dad won't be around forever. I grew up with a boat and would like my kids to as well.
The Seville was the last production car that Mitchell supervised but his last project was a concept called the Phantom, that possibly had its origin in the same Wayne Cady sketch for a V16 powered coupe that spawned the bustle back Seville. From his comments about the Phantom it was clear that he knew his time had passed.
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2014/08/bill-mitchells-swan-song-phantom/
I think we have the same books in our library.
Adrian Newey's How To Build A Car? Probably.
Even-Shoshan's A New Concordance? If you have a concordance it's likely Strong's.
The former certainly. The latter, despite being from east London my knowledge is somewhat lacking. I was thinking more of 'A Century of Automotive Style' and 'The Art of American Car Design'. Pretty much the definitive texts on American car design up to the early eighties.
I have "A Century of Automotive Style" on disc. I got it directly from Michael Lamm, might have been a gift.
Any chance you've seen "Detroit Style: Car Design in the Motor City 1950-2020"? It's the companion book to an exhibit at the Detroit Institute of Arts that included cars, studio drawings, and some original art.
I know of it, but I havem’t seen it. Do you know how widely available it was/is? Sometime these things get a very limited release and can be hard/expensive to get hold of.
Knowing that Jack would have a busy week that might preclude a midweek open thread, I had half a mind to chum the waters with some engaging content in his temporary absence.
A few fun discussion topics:
0-A fascinating New York Magazine feature on the high end world of $150K college admissions consultants - https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/college-admissions-educational-consultants-command-education.html
1-TheVerge tackled Apple’s new (F)Apple Vision Pro - https://www.theverge.com/24054862/apple-vision-pro-review-vr-ar-headset-features-price
2-Christian Horny appears to be on the hot seat at Red Bull; should he be defenestrated by the Thai shareholders and Mark Mateschitz, I anticipate that Adrian Newey and Max Verstappen will be looking to take their talents elsewhere. John Elkann would likely give Adrian a blank check.
3-Porsche announced a facelifted Taycan yesterday. Big battery improvements (more hp, much more range) and some minor aesthetic tweaks. I wonder if it will be enough to reinvigorate sales … and I wonder how (already soft) used Taycan prices will react.
Any supper clubs in your area? I'd be interested in that topic.
None of which I’m aware; I’m sure there are some that exist, but they would likely serve hookah.
They are more of a Midwestern phenomenon. I think the highest concentration is in Wisconsin.
I lived in Chicago for 5 years, so I have an awareness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supper_club
You wrote the page, right?
God help us!
Tom, it’s Wisconsin or bust! An ACF supper club gathering would be supreme.
I’m not sure which supper club I was in years ago in Wisconsin, possibly around Minoqua on Hwy 51, but they had a couple of Northern Pike swimming around in a large fish tank, and the bar back was a massive, vintage Brunswick bar with fantastic colored lighting. It was wintertime so there were more snow mobiles in the parking lot than cars.
I spend a lot of time in Northern WI near Minoqua and that could describe almost any bar or supper club in the area ;)
Can’t you just go to a steakhouse?
I wonder how much of the poor Taycan sales and resale market has to do with how devastatingly unreliable the early year cars are?
And I wonder just how successful the Macan EV is gonna be. $100k for that is pretty daunting!
I agree on both fronts.
One reason Porsches (and Rolexes, but NOT Land Rovers) tend to maintain value well is that the changes from generation to generation are incremental (and predictable).
Kneecapping values in an already soft market is not the way to treat customers of six figure cars, assuming you’d like them to continue being customers. And this on the heels of a market in which people thought they’d make money speculating on cars!
Toto should hire him…
He is on the record as saying he wished he’d had the opportunity to work with Ferrari (and several offers have been made in the past) and Hamilton. What if he can get both, and on the cusp of new rules in 2026?
0) As a relative prole I’ve always wondered what’s the point of paying some multiple of the total cost of attending a prestigious university to get your fuck trophies in? Is it purely a prestige play? Because I can’t see how paying like $5M to get a kid into Harvard where he/she will probably struggle is better than spending that $5M to set them up with a business or trust fund or whatever.
Two kinds of people send their children to prestige schools:
0. The kind of people who succeeded on their own but either don't want their kids to work that hard OR think their kids don't really have what it takes to succeed on their own. This, incidentally, is part of the "Millionaire Next Door" fellow's discovery that most self-made men force their children into ready-made wealth professions like law and medicine;
1. People who are to the manner born and expect their children to follow suit.
Prestige. People take college VERY seriously in America.
And also, a $5MM donation - for reference, the article says that $10MM is about the going rate to ensure admission at an elite school - to get into a school is likely money well spent given (0) the beneficiary will come from a wealthy background already (access to capital for the future), (1) the beneficiary will come from a family that understands the value of relationships and soft power, and (2) the beneficiary will likely have observed their parents working as entrepreneurs to grow a business (you don’t have $5MM+ to donate to a school as a wage slave).
So the beneficiary will be thinking about all of that - capital allocation; building a business; leveraging relationships - as they work their way through college, where they will meet other people who will go on to do a variety of things.
I didn’t go to Harvard, but … I have two different opportunities in front of people I went to college with at the moment; these are not people I have been close to at all since I graduated in 2011 (I just sent them messages on LinkedIn). I was able to (1) get Jack Daniel’s to evaluate a Le Mans / WEC sponsorship opportunity, and (2) to get a niche, specialty bank to contemplate banking a sector of lucrative (but high risk) clients based on those relationships.
From down here in prole world if you have $5-10M you can “throw away” on getting a kid into a nicer college, implying he/she can’t hack it on their own, you’ve already won. Take your ball and go home. But this mentality is probably partially why I don’t have $5-10M.
This is the speech John Goodman gives Marky Mark in The Gambler.
The sound you're hearing is a ladder being pulled up on a generation of smart kids who's parents aren't worth eight plus figures.
Did you read the article?
It talks about the arms race among the most affluent, privileged applicants (there are only so many rich, White/Jewish/Asian students who attended the top tier of Manhattan private day schools - or elite NE boarding schools for that matter - and had stellar grades, test scores, and extracurricular, etc. favorables that any given desirable college can admit).
I had dinner on Sunday night with a friend I met in Chicago. He grew up in small town Nebraska (100 miles from Omaha), where his family has been in the cattle business since the 1880s. He earned an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of Chicago, but he is now working as a cattleman.
He was passing through Atlanta en route to Nebraska and spent the night with a U Chicago friend who lives here; that friend is … a high end college admissions consultant!
The consultant agreed with my idea - move somewhere remote and apply to Harvard, etc. as someone who grew up in Eastern Kentucky or South Texas or wherever.
Well put. It all comes down to the potential for increased social capital.
JD livery on a LM car. Excellent! No doubt you've seen the JD V8 Supercar. I guess this is one of the reasons F1 didn't want Andretti.
My college friend led the Jack Daniel’s sponsorship opportunity with the McLaren Formula 1 team (small decal on the flank of the nose).
They had the last internal meeting on the opportunity today. Hoping they give us the green light Monday!
Piastri finally has a JD sticker on his car just like all the kids he went to school with!
He'll be a natural with a can of JD and coke too!
JD is there because Coca Cola invited them (yes, seriously).
On Mr. ginger Spice...
The headlines on The Race and Racefans started out with just him facing accusations, and being investigated. It was dystopian, nothing about who was accusing him or of what. It was enough that he was accused.
Eventually it was a woman was accusing him of...something?
Maybe I can get my local newspaper to say my rivals are being investigated. Think they would want to know by who or why before printing?
It seems like he is being accused of being a highly demanding control freak. Well no shit, how do you think they got to the top of the heap in F1, luck?
Of course if he pulled a Brett Farve and is sending around dick pics, his life as he knows it is pretty much over.
The bustle back Seville is one of GM’s last great designs or perhaps last time the designers had the upper hand. On its unveiling to a group of Cadillac dealers it received a standing ovation.
If you like the neo-classic lines thank designer Wayne Kady and Bill Mitchell who got it to production.
The 80-85 Seville looks best in all black or all white, I will brook no two-tone combinations as I feel it spoils the lines. For two years or so I daily drove a black over red leather 85 Seville, such an elegant car, especially with the standard wheel disks, instead of the wire wheel hubcaps. Cursed with the 4.1, the Seville managed 30 mpg with the cruise set at 65 (no hills please) but she succumbed to a front lower main bearing failure despite my following all the 4.1 maintenance rituals.
I would still welcome a 80-81 Seville with the 350 Olds or Cadillac 368 into my fleet.
But if you want a proper two door Seville, coachbuilder AHA in Toronto Canada produced a lovely example with full size doors. See it here: https://www.newcadillacdatabase.org/static/CDB/Dbas_txt/Drm80-84.htm
My own personal hireath is an alternate reality where the gas crisis never happened. I get weak in the knees imagining the V16 Eldorados: https://blog.consumerguide.com/psychedelic-16-cadillacs-multi-cylinder-concepts-of-the-60s/
16 cylinder cars are cool and the sixteen was something that should have been produced for no other reason than to provide an alternative to rolls royce maybe
also its toronto ontario
Wanted to make sure no one mistook it for the Toronto in Ohio or Cuba ;)
“The bad toronto” would suffice.
There is a line in one of my all-time favorite songs "Bling Bling" where one of the rappers claims that Baby is getting a custom built V14 Mercedes. Obviously that was a Spinal Tap-esque boast that his car was two better than a V12, but it is not hard to imagine the kind of credibility Caddy would have if they actually made a modern V16.
Great links!
Can you imagine the phenomenal 1967 Eldorado with a V12? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BmKQ8WqlWE0&t=7s
Really? I always liked the two-tone black and silver ones.
It's also not lost on me that if the bustleback Seville existed today, it would be marketed as a "four-door coupe." And it sort of *was*. It was the same E-body platform as the Riviera, Eldorado and Toronado coupes, despite being given a K-body designation.
I don't mind certain two tone combinations but I think the Seville is one of those designs on which colour plays an important role. Unlike say a 59 Cadillac which looks great in any colour.
Oh yeah. Seville was ABSOLUTELY a four door coupe. It's the precise equivalent to the current AMG GT sedan but a little more honest as it was actually built on the same platform as the Eldo coupe.
Lol, the AMG GT coupe and four-door coupe being on completely different platforms was always amusing to me. And why did the AMG GT four-door coupe need to exist when they already had the CLS-Class, both of which were offshoots of the E-Class?
I guess one's a liftback and one isn't...
Just like your humble author in his thirties, MB is determined to fill every available hole in the market whether there's overlap with another one or not.
And off the market
The problem was that bustle back Seville sold worse than the previous generation, and appealed to older customers, the exact opposite of what the '76 did (and what GM wanted). It was a retrograde step.
You're not wrong about the influence of head designers though. By the end Mitchell was out of allies and out of time, and the Ren-Cen was determined to keep the Tech Center on a much tighter leash than had been the case under Earl and Mitchell. That's why Kerhl promoted Irv Rybicki over Chuck Jordan (who was Mitchell's hand picked successor).
The bustle back was the better car (from an engineering standpoint) but the styling was love it or hate it for many. The ultimate snub to Mitchell was the removal of the Phantom from the 1977 internal styling show and the refusal of GM to allocate the funds to make the roller model into a working prototype. I wasn’t there and I’m still salty about it. https://www.shannons.com.au/club/news/retroautos/the-phantom-bill-mitchells-last-gift/
What a stunning car.
GM never sold anything with that kind of visual impact. Not in the Eighties anyway.