The Vent and Rant Thread

[Bilbo1967]

I prefer to lease my cars. I'm neither practical enough nor have the time to service/mend my cars myself so it suits me better to have a service plan and only have a car for a maximum of three years so that any repairs will be covered under the warranty.

I'll admit that I also like having a new car and I can certainly afford a 'nicer' car by leasing than I could get by buying. I have been averaging around 30k miles a year in recent years (although it's dropped a bit lately as I work more in London and abroad) so I spend a lot of time in my car and like to make it a nice envronment for that reason.

[covingtoncat73]

Originally Posted by Bilbo1967

I prefer to lease my cars. I'm neither practical enough nor have the time to service/mend my cars myself so it suits me better to have a service plan and only have a car for a maximum of three years so that any repairs will be covered under the warranty.

I'll admit that I also like having a new car and I can certainly afford a 'nicer' car by leasing than I could get by buying. I have been averaging around 30k miles a year in recent years (although it's dropped a bit lately as I work more in London and abroad) so I spend a lot of time in my car and like to make it a nice environment for that reason.

That makes sense. As soon as I can pay down some credit cards and come up with a 1k down payment, I will probably lease a Smart Car.

[Glorfindel]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

(Along those lines, Ford had a race car called the Ford GT back in the 70's. To be legal under USAC rules, it had to technically be a "production" car, so British Ford Special Products division made 50 for sale to the public. A GT in full race tuning could do over 200mph. How much over was uncertain, because it might take off and fly at that speed, and Ford lost a couple of test drivers finding that out. So someone thought about drivers trying to open it up on unlimited speed highways, and the version sold to the public was detuned to give it a maximum speed of only 160mph...)
______
Dennis

The original GT40 was made in the 60s, Ford changed the name to GT after licensing issues and made the Ford GT in 05-06 and then this year released the second generation of that line. Top speed is closer to 300 than 200.

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[orlok]

Originally Posted by covingtoncat73

That makes sense. As soon as I can pay down some credit cards and come up with a 1000k down payment, I will probably lease a Smart Car.

I'm assuming you don't mean a million dollars down payment. Or it's on hell of a smart car...

[covingtoncat73]

Originally Posted by orlok

I'm assuming you don't mean a million dollars down payment. Or it's on hell of a smart car...

LOL. Indeed $1000.

[wodin]

Originally Posted by Bilbo1967

I prefer to lease my cars. I'm neither practical enough nor have the time to service/mend my cars myself so it suits me better to have a service plan and only have a car for a maximum of three years so that any repairs will be covered under the warranty.

I'll admit that I also like having a new car and I can certainly afford a 'nicer' car by leasing than I could get by buying. I have been averaging around 30k miles a year in recent years (although it's dropped a bit lately as I work more in London and abroad) so I spend a lot of time in my car and like to make it a nice envronment for that reason.

Yea, what he said.

[wodin]

Originally Posted by Hitch

You know, here's the thing. I'm NOT immune to the allure of a new car. Something with nice lines, sweet leather...I'm not. I'm just NOT willing to finance a depreciating asset. Ixnay on that. I did it once--in 1985, and never again since. Every vehicle we've bought since then, new or used--we pay all cash. If I can't afford it, I can't have it. Period.

After all: I mean, really, what is the actual difference between, say, a Mustang and a Jag? Other than, what, $30K? They are both CARS. They both depreciate. They are vehicles that take you from A to B in relative comfort. After that, you're paying for snob factor. (And...I confess, even more: I like expensive cars. I do. I'd take an R8 in a heartbeat.) But my left-brain just won't let that right brain splurge on a silly thing like a bloody CAR...

Hitch

If that's your thing there is something to be said about picking up a nicely restored classic. You can get a decent sixties something Mustang for around the price of a new Mustang.

What you don't get is 21st century technology or new car depreciation, and you can get that new car smell in a can. In fact if you chose carefully and are lucky you might just get an appreciation rate that's better than a certificate of deposit.

[badgoodDeb]

Originally Posted by Bilbo1967

I prefer to lease my cars. I'm neither practical enough nor have the time to service/mend my cars myself so it suits me better to have a service plan and only have a car for a maximum of three years so that any repairs will be covered under the warranty.

I'm single, and in suburbia, where there isn't mass transit going where I need to be for work. So I usually trade in a car when it reaches the mid 60k mile stage, when the milage starts to become a negative factor in the resale price. Every 5 or 6 years I get a new or 1-yr used car. Because I don't have the time (or backup) for them to "go wrong" on me, and I'd rather have car payments than unpredictable "fix payments".

However, I admit I'm getting tired of installing a new trailer hitch (myself*) so mayyybe I'll try to keep this one longer, and merely *bank* the car payment towards those fix payments. Maybe.

*taking off the back bumper and drilling a hole in it, to install the only hitch I've seen for a MINI Cooper, gets tiring.

[wodin]

Originally Posted by badgoodDeb

*taking off the back bumper and drilling a hole in it, to install the only hitch I've seen for a MINI Cooper, gets tiring.

I just (2 months/2000 miles) leased a new Mini Cooper S Countryman, 36 months lease, 36 months warranty, 36 months pre-paid maintenance. And in 2019 I get to have another one. So far I love my Mini.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by wodin

If that's your thing there is something to be said about picking up a nicely restored classic. You can get a decent sixties something Mustang for around the price of a new Mustang.

What you don't get is 21st century technology or new car depreciation, and you can get that new car smell in a can. In fact if you chose carefully and are lucky you might just get an appreciation rate that's better than a certificate of deposit.

Ohhhhhhhhh, don't. We live quite near the January Barrett-Jackson auction. We now live further away from it than we did 7 years ago--nearly within walking distance of our home at that time in Scottsdale--and I have to restrain BOTH of us, annually, as my mindset is...better to look and drool over the TV, than to risk the two of us and a checkbook or cc at the actual bloody auction.

Plus, to be honest--I used to prefer the auction when it had what I consider to be classics--all the Dusenbergs, etc.--rather than muscle cars. When it comes to muscle cars, been there, done that, way back.

Generally speaking, outside of automotive royalty (the Veyron, the GT, Roller, that tasty little Bentley convertible that I've been lusting after, the Audi R8-have you EVER been in one?--OM*F!!!--almost any "real" Porsche, and of course, the Enzo, and a few others), my real, everyday automotive tastes are fairly simple. I like the VW CC, for example. Perfectly suitable. The Audis--a hundred zillion years ago, I had a Fox, when I was living in Germany. I like all of them, in the midsize line. I no longer need an A8 for business, or any other larger sedan with 4drs.

So, not going to give in to restored older-car craziness. Hell..a few more years, not many, and my own damn car will be a nicely-restored pseudo-classic. At the point that I really consider giving her the heave-ho, I'll pass her on to some young family member in desperate straits, and find some nice "gently owned" second-hand car to toddle around in until she or I croak, whichever comes first. :-)

Hitch

[cromag]

My rant: My parents are elderly and their health isn't what it used to be -- especially for Mom, who has been in the hospital several times recently, and is back in the hospital this week. My son and I visited tonight. Mom uses hearing aids, and she really needs them. But the hearing aids are expensive, and Mom has a habit of misplacing them, so when she goes to the hospital she doesn't take her hearing aids. I think I finally conveyed to her the fact that if this happens again I'm going to bring in an ear trumpet.

[Xenophon]

All this talk of well-used cars reminds me of a few my parents owned.

My parents bought a new 1964 Plymouth Barracuda, for a ridiculously low price. It had the optional 273 cu in V8. The engine had been "blueprinted" and the car hot-rodded in various ways by the dealer's mechanics and machinists. It had been intended as a high-school graduation gift for the dealer's son... who then flunked out and didn't graduate. That car provided reliable and fun transportation for 240K miles, until it finally died (quite catastrophically) in 1973. Less than a block from home, there was a very loud BANG followed by smoke and a grinding noise. When everything came to a stop, we were astonished to see holes in the hood where some pistons and parts of the cylinder heads had been fired upwards through the hood! Totally dead car. Sadly, it didn't make it until I was old enough to drive.

Its replacement was a 74 Volvo 145 wagon. 2.5 tons of Swedish steel, with a tiny 4-banger engine. And it was the first year of Federally-mandated pollution controls, which also greatly reduced the available power. The family joke was that if you stepped all the way on the gas pedal, you didn't speed up... the only thing that happened is that the engine got louder!

In 1978, I learned to drive in a 1957 VW Beetle, with all flat glass, running boards, and the split rear window. One of my Dad's grad students had bought it used in the late '60s, with 90-something thousand miles on the odometer (no 100K digit, so there's no knowing the actual mileage). My parents bought it from him when he got his Ph.D. and went back to France in the early '70s. By the time I was learning to drive, we'd put another 240K miles on it. It was a great car for a teenaged driver -- it had a blue-book value of $0! My folks eventually sold it to a relative who was visiting from overseas, and wanted to drive around the US. It was cheap, reliable, and easy to work on. A competent shade-tree mechanic could repair just about anything with a coat-hanger and a rock. (OK, that's hyperbole, but you get the idea...) If you visit the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley, you can see a picture of that car taken around 1970 when my Dad's graduate students were measuring it to get data to make a 3D computer-graphics model for their research.

Thanks for sending me on this trip down memory lane!

[Katsunami]

I hate wrong specifications in shops. I've ordered some feet, thinking to raise a table about 2-3cm and, in one fell swoop, protect the floor against scratches.

"Height of feet: 2.5cm."

Perfect. Ordered.

Now they're delivered, and the height of the feet is actually only 8mm. They've included the length of the screw in the height. Idiots. What do I care about that? If the screw is 1cm, 2cm, or 30cm, that doesn't add anything to the height of the feet themselves.

The specifications should have been:

"Height of feet: 8mm. Length of screw: 17mm."

[Rumpelteazer]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

I hate wrong specifications in shops.

It's not just shops, it's catalogues from manufacturers, too. Phillips is notorious for missing and just plain wrong information.

My father wanted to make a list today of fluorescent tubes sorted by watt. We store the tubes by lengt, which is okay for the old fashioned TL8 tubes, the higher the watt the longer the tube (exept for a two or three exception or rare tubes). With the newer tubes, the TL5, that isn't the case; the 21 watt is longer than the 54 watt. And since most of the longer lengths are still rare we always end up searching the whole bin. With a list you can check how long they are and then you know where to look.

My father initially used the Philips catalogue and even for the TL8s the lengths were wrong. In the end he found that the Osram catalogue had the right information and the Sylvania catalogue had a bunch of special tubes the Osram didn't have.

[Katsunami]

A followup rant is that's it's actually useless to send the order back.

Those feet cost something like 4.95 for a set of 8, and 2,95 shipping. Total is 7.90 euro's. The box they come in doesn't fit into the mailbox, so I'd have to send the order back as a package, for 6.75 euro's. I'll recoup €1.15. Whoopy.

If I remember correctly, shops should reimburse return shipment costs (or provide free shipping) and reimburse the shipment costs toward the customer as well, but I've only encountered very few that do.

While I would be completely in my right to try to undo this order and have €7.90 returned because I got a product that does not meet my expectations / has wrong specifications, it's not enough money to be worth it. It's not worth the time and energy.

Spoiler:

(That is, as opposed to the broken Brother label printer of some time ago... but I got my revenge. Maybe I've told that here as well; when looking through the list of cartridges for that label printer, I noticed it was suddenly twice as expensive as before. The shop sold it to me at the wrong price. So that why that 550 model was cheaper than the 350... Maybe that was also the reason why they were so quick to point out that I could return the product for a reimbursement. I even suspect that their non-cooperative way of handling the warranty was an attempt to get me to return the product.)