Guest Post by Eric Peters
Cars used to be able to take a hit. They weren’t as “safe,” it’s true. But the price you’re paying for that – literally – comes in the mail every six months or once a year, whenever the insurance mafia sends you the bill for it.
The bill – which has gone up by 26 percent on average over just the past 12 months – is based on the potential repair costs of fixing your late-model vehicle. Or the other guy’s. It doesn’t matter.
Continue reading “Soft on the Outside”
If you have a:
$10K 🚙
$1M net worthPeople think you’re broke.
But if you have a
$90K 🚗
$10K net worthPeople think you’re rich.
— CarDealershipGuy (@GuyDealership) June 25, 2023
Guest Post by Eric Peters
Collectivists often say there is a “need” for something – and that coercion (i.e., government) must provide it.
As in the “need” for . . . insert here.
What’s interesting about this, beyond the often unnoticed fact that collectivism is really a kind of deformed individualism in that every “collective” is necessarily run by individuals (Stalin, for instance) who coerce the collective, is what’s admitted to by collectivists – without irony or understanding. That being if there is, in fact, a need for something, there is incentive (money to be made, profit) to provide it, arising from from the willingness of those who feel the need for that something to pay for it.
Put another way: If there is no incentive to provide it – because people aren’t willing to pay for it – it is persuasive evidence people aren’t especially interested in it.
In other words, people – as individuals – don’t really need it.
What coercive collectivists really mean is that they, the collectivists, want whatever it is.
Guest Post by Eric Peters
Flimsy construction used to be one of the defining attributes of a cheap car – along with the absence of even basic amenities like air conditioning, which was a defining attribute of a luxury car not all that long ago.
Modern cars – even luxury cars – are all cheaply built.
If you’ve raised the hood of one, you will know all about it. The metal is so light it can be held up by a flimsy little metal rod – and the metal is so thin, you can see it flex and (if so inclined) could bend it with your bare hands. It’s often not much more substantial than a piece of cardboard; a cat walking across it might leave more than just paw prints.
Guest Post by Eric Peters
Next year may be your last chance to buy an American car.
Not the brand. The type.
Arguably, there is only one company still selling American cars. Big, rear-wheel-drive cars with nothing smaller than a V6 under the hood – without a big price. Or at least a price that average Americans can still manage.
That company is – was – FiatChrysler. Which company just merged with a French car company, Peugot, that specializes in small-engined, small cars.
Guest Post by Eric Peters
The problem with new cars is they’re too good for their own good. Well, too good for the car companies trying to sell new cars.
Rust has become almost a non-problem. Reliability is a given.
Guest Post by Eric Peters
Something strange – and dangerous – happened to me the other day while I was out test-driving a new Toyota Prius.
The car decided it was time to stop. In the middle of the road. For reasons known only to the emperor.
Or the software.
I found myself parked in the middle of the road – with traffic not parked coming up behind me, fast. Other drivers were probably were wondering why that idiot in the Prius had decided to stop in the middle of the road.
By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com
Life is hard as it is. Too many rough roads to travel. Too many chains to untangle. But no matter how cruel the world may be, life becomes less hard when you got a good friend.
– Unknown
True friends say good things behind your back and bad things to your face.
– Unknown
In the late nineteen-forties, three young men graduated college, packed their gear into a Willy’s four-by-four and took a road trip into the Canadian wilderness where they built a log-cabin. They felled trees by hand and used nineteenth-century tools to construct the cabin of such quality, it was shared by multiple generations of their three families over the next five decades.
Continue reading “On Fishing, Friends, and Hidden Treasures Found”
Guest Post by Eric Peters
Government homogenizes everything it touches. It makes things uniform, drains the color, randomness and difference out of life.
Government is the reason why cars increasingly look . . . homogenized. The basic shape is becoming uniform – the inevitable end result of having to comply with government edicts specifying that a car must successfully withstand being hit from the side, behind and at various angles; this has imposed a design template on all cars, regardless of brand or model. It is why all brands and models increasingly look the same except for increasingly bizarre grille and headlight shapes – which are a kind of desperate last salvo of expression still possible only because the government hasn’t yet got around to decreeing how grilles and headlights should be shaped.
Guest Post by Eric Peters
You’ve heard the story about teaching a pig to sing? It wastes your time and annoys the pig. So said Mark Twain, at any rate.
But how do you deal with cars that are pigs?
Which is all new cars.
Continue reading “Their Zippers Bust, Their Buckles Break . . .”
Guest Post by Eric Peters
One of the many cons being perpetrated upon the car-buying public is that the very small, very turbocharged four cylinder engines being served up as replacements for “thirsty” V6 and even V8 engines in larger vehicles especially are money-savers.
Hell, they hardly save much gas.
And they cost in other – hidden – ways.
Guest Post by Eric Peters
I’ve written before about low-cost, simple vehicles the car companies aren’t allowed to sell here because they don’t conform to the various edicts issued by the federal government regarding emissions (defensible, within reason) and saaaaaaaaaaaaaafety (indefensible, period – as the government has no legitimate basis dictating to such a thing to supposedly “free” adults).
Well, here’s one you can at least buy – and it’s legal to own it, too. No government SWAT teams will descend for having one in the garage.
It’s the $15,540 Mahindra Roxor.
It’s basically a rebooted ‘70s-era Jeep CJ, which means it’s a rugged, simple 4×4. It features heavy duty body-on-frame construction, with a rugged steel body designed to be easy – and cheap – to repair.
Continue reading “The Jeep We Can Buy But Can’t Drive . . .”
Guest Post by Eric Peters
Have you heard about SOL for cars?
It’s like the Standards of Learning for kids – the tests administered by the schools as a way to gauge whether (cue The Chimp) the children is learning. SOLs are widely considered a scam because the kids aren’t learning – just being taught to pass the test.
It’s a game.
Likewise, the government’s miles-per-gallon testing. The car companies build their cars to perform as well as possible on the EPA’s test loop, so they can tout the best-possible city/highway numbers – and not just to entice buyers. These numbers are also used to calculate the Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency (CAFE) numbers which the car companies have to deal with. When their “fleet average” – the combined mileage of all the vehicles they sell – dips below whatever Uncle says the mandatory minimum is (it’s currently 35.5 MPG) they get fined and these fines, of course, are passed on to us.
So it’s very important to do well on the tests.
This is why almost all new cars come only with automatic transmissions.
Guest Post by Eric Peters
Nissan just announced a new SUV they’re not going to sell here.
It’s called the Terra – and the Chinese (and other foreign markets) will get it beginning next spring. Nissan’s Ashwani Gupta says there is growing demand in China for “go anywhere SUVs built like the rugged SUVs old” – which apparently are no longer in demand here.
This, of course, is claptrap. There is plenty of demand.
The problem is Uncle.
Guest Post by Eric Peters
One of the reasons for liking old cars is they don’t try to parent you. The new stuff won’t quit trying to.
The 2018 VW Golf GTI I am reviewing this week, for instance. When you put the transmission in Reverse, the radio’s volume’s is peremptorily turned down – apparently because someone decided it wasn’t saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafe to back up while listening to the radio.
One can almost see the liver-spotted hand of your mother-in-law adjusting the volume control knob. Many new cars have this “feature” – not just new VWs.
It’s incredibly obnoxious. More so because it’s not your mother-in-law and you can’t slap her liver-spotted hand down or – better – hit the unlock button and tell the old bag to get out now if she can’t mind her own business.
Speaking of door locks . . . .
Guest Post by Eric Peters
Working on cars has become part of America’s cultural past, like so many other things which used to define American culture. Which was, above all, a car culture. What you drove was very important and – especially for young guys – it was almost as important to know how it worked and to at least plausibly be able to work on it.
Males were expected to have a degree of mechanical competence or at least interest and if not your maleness was somewhat suspect.
That’s all gone now.
