GM makes a nice $10,000 car but Obama won't let you buy it.

[Missourian]

Got to go with SS on this one.

I bought my 89 f-150 in 2003 for $700...and I've but 100,000 miles on it on top of the 100K it had in it when I bought it...maybe $2000 in non-regular maintenance repair doing it myself...and it still does what a brand new truck does.

Now I'm looking at going the other way...back into the 70's to find another Highboy or F-100.

My wife drives a pristine '93 Park Avenue that we paid $3000 for...but the engine has no distributor, no carburetor, no valve adjustment...even changing the spark plugs is challenging.

My wife's car has no distributor, no carb...it's a 1986. (It's a Buick Grand National, which got EFI & distributorless ignition in 1984.)

But the spark plugs aren't jammed against the firewall.

My 89 p/u has EFI...one of the few thinks I don't like about it.

New car not only depreciate by half on signing, but the owner is forever a slave to the dealership or mechanic for even the most routine repair.

Hardly.

A little hyperbole there.

I have a 68 VW Beetle that is going to replace that Buick as soon as I get around to sprucin' her up a bit. I paid $600 for her and will likely put $3000 or more into getting her up to wifely standards...but you can fix a VW 1600cc engine by accident.

The VW Beetle is the worst car sold in the Unites States in the last 50 years.

I'm sure you meant "best" here.

 

[Jarlaxle]

Holy crap. I just had to put a "thanks" on a ShootSpeeders post. That's never happened before. But it's gotta be did, because he's right.

Heated side-view mirrors... cameras to back up by (cameras!)... electrically operated fan vent movers...

Heated mirrors are a safety feature. I have owned three cars with them (2 Caprices & my Magnum) and REALLY miss them on my Jeep. Note: the truck I drive at work is a Ryder rental, built as cheap as possible. (It has crank windows, manual everything, not even a tilt column.) It has heated mirrors. Honestly, I could make a pretty good case for REQUIRING them, at least on trucks!

You're actually too lazy to simply scrape the damn mirror? Really?

I can't stand that useless power-assisted mentality. I'm reminded of that every time I switch the ventilation control on my MINI and hear a motor running. A motor-- to change a vent. That's just insane.

Explain, in detail, EXACTLY how I am supposed to clean the passenger mirror of a moving truck from the driver's seat. Be specific. Also: it's not just ice. It keeps them clear in rain, snow, and fog.

Every vehicle I have seen dating to the 70's uses motors for HVAC control...some (like a Mini) are electric, some (like my Cherokee) are vacuum.

 

[Jarlaxle]

Got to go with SS on this one.

I bought my 89 f-150 in 2003 for $700...and I've but 100,000 miles on it on top of the 100K it had in it when I bought it...maybe $2000 in non-regular maintenance repair doing it myself...and it still does what a brand new truck does.

Now I'm looking at going the other way...back into the 70's to find another Highboy or F-100.

My wife drives a pristine '93 Park Avenue that we paid $3000 for...but the engine has no distributor, no carburetor, no valve adjustment...even changing the spark plugs is challenging.

My wife's car has no distributor, no carb...it's a 1986. (It's a Buick Grand National, which got EFI & distributorless ignition in 1984.)

But the spark plugs aren't jammed against the firewall.

My 89 p/u has EFI...one of the few thinks I don't like about it.




A little hyperbole there.

I have a 68 VW Beetle that is going to replace that Buick as soon as I get around to sprucin' her up a bit. I paid $600 for her and will likely put $3000 or more into getting her up to wifely standards...but you can fix a VW 1600cc engine by accident.

The VW Beetle is the worst car sold in the Unites States in the last 50 years.

I'm sure you meant "best" here.

No. It's a slow, ugly, ill-handling, poor-braking deathtrap.

 

[Dugdale_Jukes]

What are the specifics missing from the car keeping it from being sold? - great question

Specific safety misses are not listed, but no car made ten years ago (2003 Mercedes was the example) passes them, which means all the new regs could be eliminated without a statistically significant difference in on-road results.

According to the link the emissions up charges - all of which, like the safety standards, are nonsense - could be worked in by trading them for standard bluetooth, remote control mirrors, stereo, and other stuff many would not pay for if it was not standard equipment. In other words this is a vehicle that could sell for about $7,500 in a stripped down version.

From the article:

Instead of a $200 catalytic converter, a $70 oxygen sensor and a $500 throttle body fuel injection system – which cleaned up 90 percent of the exhaust – it’s $500 a piece for for multiple close-coupled cats, $2,000 for direct gas injection (and so on) to get a 1 percent (if that) additional reduction.
​

There have been exactly zero safety upgrades since 2003 and zero emissions standards increases since 1993 that make a statistically significant difference. The government is simply helping existing corporations to stop competition.

Just as it has done since Reagan era deregulation facilitated monster size corporations by literally giving tax money to corporations (supply side voodoo) for the purpose of killing competition with both regulation and LBOs using "other people's money" instead of corporate income or rainy-day funds. Both US political parties are EQUALLY guilty - before someone points out that Clinton signed the EPA regs.

In any event, so much for free markets, eh?

 

[Pogo]

Heated mirrors are a safety feature. I have owned three cars with them (2 Caprices & my Magnum) and REALLY miss them on my Jeep. Note: the truck I drive at work is a Ryder rental, built as cheap as possible. (It has crank windows, manual everything, not even a tilt column.) It has heated mirrors. Honestly, I could make a pretty good case for REQUIRING them, at least on trucks!

You're actually too lazy to simply scrape the damn mirror? Really?

I can't stand that useless power-assisted mentality. I'm reminded of that every time I switch the ventilation control on my MINI and hear a motor running. A motor-- to change a vent. That's just insane.

Explain, in detail, EXACTLY how I am supposed to clean the passenger mirror of a moving truck from the driver's seat. Be specific. Also: it's not just ice. It keeps them clear in rain, snow, and fog.

Every vehicle I have seen dating to the 70's uses motors for HVAC control...some (like a Mini) are electric, some (like my Cherokee) are vacuum.

Then you haven't seen many. On my other car, I move a lever and that moves the vent. No motor, no vacuum. All a motor does is provide one more thing to go wrong so they can charge an arm and a leg to fix it. MINI lives by that shit. That's why I'm getting rid of it.

 

[Jarlaxle]

What are the specifics missing from the car keeping it from being sold? - great question

Specific safety misses are not listed, but no car made ten years ago (2003 Mercedes was the example) passes them, which means all the new regs could be eliminated without a statistically significant difference in on-road results.

According to the link the emissions up charges - all of which, like the safety standards, are nonsense - could be worked in by trading them for standard bluetooth, remote control mirrors, stereo, and other stuff many would not pay for if it was not standard equipment. In other words this is a vehicle that could sell for about $7,500 in a stripped down version.

From the article:

Instead of a $200 catalytic converter, a $70 oxygen sensor and a $500 throttle body fuel injection system – which cleaned up 90 percent of the exhaust – it’s $500 a piece for for multiple close-coupled cats, $2,000 for direct gas injection (and so on) to get a 1 percent (if that) additional reduction.
​

There have been exactly zero safety upgrades since 2003 and zero emissions standards increases since 1993 that make a statistically significant difference. The government is simply helping existing corporations to stop competition.

Whoa--steaming turd alert! Off the top of my head, TPMS is mandatory now, as is stability control. There was a quantum leap in emission standards for 1996, with the implementation of OBD2.

 

[Jarlaxle]

You're actually too lazy to simply scrape the damn mirror? Really?

I can't stand that useless power-assisted mentality. I'm reminded of that every time I switch the ventilation control on my MINI and hear a motor running. A motor-- to change a vent. That's just insane.

Explain, in detail, EXACTLY how I am supposed to clean the passenger mirror of a moving truck from the driver's seat. Be specific. Also: it's not just ice. It keeps them clear in rain, snow, and fog.

Every vehicle I have seen dating to the 70's uses motors for HVAC control...some (like a Mini) are electric, some (like my Cherokee) are vacuum.

Then you haven't seen many. On my other car, I move a lever and that moves the vent. No motor, no vacuum. All a motor does is provide one more thing to go wrong so they can charge an arm and a leg to fix it. MINI lives by that shit. That's why I'm getting rid of it.

Yes, some cars have a lever instead of a button or dial...you move the lever, the lever activates the motor, and the blend door moves! Other than a few non-A/C stripper models from the 70's and 80's, everything I have owned (as far back as 1978) had vacuum or electric HVAC controls. (Some use a hybrid system, with the blend door motorized & the temperature controlled by a cable.) Is your other car from the 1950's?

 

[Pogo]

Explain, in detail, EXACTLY how I am supposed to clean the passenger mirror of a moving truck from the driver's seat. Be specific. Also: it's not just ice. It keeps them clear in rain, snow, and fog.

Every vehicle I have seen dating to the 70's uses motors for HVAC control...some (like a Mini) are electric, some (like my Cherokee) are vacuum.

Then you haven't seen many. On my other car, I move a lever and that moves the vent. No motor, no vacuum. All a motor does is provide one more thing to go wrong so they can charge an arm and a leg to fix it. MINI lives by that shit. That's why I'm getting rid of it.

Yes, some cars have a lever instead of a button or dial...you move the lever, the lever activates the motor, and the blend door moves! Other than a few non-A/C stripper models from the 70's and 80's, everything I have owned (as far back as 1978) had vacuum or electric HVAC controls. (Some use a hybrid system, with the blend door motorized & the temperature controlled by a cable.) Is your other car from the 1950's?

Ah, every car you've owned. Move that goalpost.

No, it's from the '90s.

Why would you design a lever to activate a motor?

 

[Jarlaxle]

No idea...ask Ford, GM, Chrysler, Mazda, and Suzuki. Until the mid-90's, sliding levers for HVAC were normal in cars. My Caddy (1979), Liz's Grand National (1986), my truck (1979), and her Blazer (1986) all use levers to run the HVAC controls. The last thing I recall having cable-operated controls was my diesel Escort...and I recall that even that would have used a vacuum motor if it had A/C.

 

[thereisnospoon]

I drive a $2000 car and it runs and looks great. It's used. Only morons buy new cars.

GM?s $9,800 Car . . . The One We?re Not Allowed to Buy |

Posted on June 6, 2013
How much is the EPA and DOT costing you?

One way to quantify this is to consider a car GM builds – but which you can’t buy. Well, not unless you move outside the United States – and beyond the diktats and fatwas of the EPA and DOT.

It is called the Sail – and GM makes it in China. It retails for 60,000 yuan – equivalent to about $9,800 in “federal” reserve notes.

Demand for the car is so great that GM plans to increase its exports of the Sail to countries like Chile and Ecuador by nearly 70 percent, according to a recent Reuters article (see here).

It just won’t be exported here.

Those two federal agencies mentioned at the beginning of this story. These unelected and unaccountable bureaucracies have made it illegal – a criminal offense – to sell you a car like the Sail. Which, by the way, is neither primitive nor pathetic. The most recent design is a modern and aesthetically appealing sedan or five-door hatchback wagon with a Corvette-inspired “dual cockpit” dash layout. The car has AC, power windows, power door mirrors and a modern stereo with Bluetooth wireless and music streaming. It even has a leather-wrapped steering wheel.

It would look at home on any road – and in any garage – in the Western world.
/QUOTE]

I drive a $2000 car and it runs and looks great. It's used. Only morons buy new cars.

thats because you are cheap fucker.....

Noit that I wat to jump on 'shoot speeder's ' bandwagon, but the wife and I have not bought a new car in over 20 years.
The reason is depreciation and the way it has an effect on the value of the vehicle in that first 6 months. Most vehicles lose 30% of their value in that time.
After 3 years, 50%..So I find it idiotic to finance a vehicle in which the loan will be upside down unless the vehicle can be paid off.

 

[Missourian]

I drive a $2000 car and it runs and looks great. It's used. Only morons buy new cars.



I drive a $2000 car and it runs and looks great. It's used. Only morons buy new cars.

thats because you are cheap fucker.....

Noit that I wat to jump on 'shoot speeder's ' bandwagon, but the wife and I have not bought a new car in over 20 years.
The reason is depreciation and the way it has an effect on the value of the vehicle in that first 6 months. Most vehicles lose 30% of their value in that time.
After 3 years, 50%..So I find it idiotic to finance a vehicle in which the loan will be upside down unless the vehicle can be paid off.

And I find it idiotic to pay $22,000+ for a base model full sized pickup.