Random Thoughts... [Automotive Edition]

prizrak said:
There are very...
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Again, planning on driving the drivetrain all on itself? You clearly haven't even read the messages I posted earlier. Instead of posting the same line over and over, would you explain why I should ignore everything that effects how the car handles and performs? Or why 300 is decent power, but 290 clearly isn't.

Unless you post a proper response instead of a one line response that could be from "rainman", I'm not going to ignore you.
 
On the morning of the crash (a working day, not Sunday as shown in the article), Ferrari was indeed a banned word unless you used a proxy.
 
Spectre said:
You know someone is desperate to sell their cars when they go to the trouble to get large magnetic signs made up.
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I don't see how it's desperate. Are people who put for sale signs outside their house desperate? It looks to be a dealer, they probably use the same signs for every car. They get free (bar the cost of a magnetic sign, not much) advertising seen by thousands daily just by driving around or parking the car on a busy road. Plus extra when people take photos of it and post it online :p

We've sold two cars in the past just by putting signs on the window and parking them in the street...

Obviously I know whenever you see a German car with anything that even vaguely possibly loosely suggests that it's bad you will pounce on it... ;)
 
Hbriz said:
I don't see how it's desperate. Are people who put for sale signs outside their house desperate? It looks to be a dealer, they probably use the same signs for every car. They get free (bar the cost of a magnetic sign, not much) advertising seen by thousands daily just by driving around or parking the car on a busy road. Plus extra when people take photos of it and post it online :p

We've sold two cars in the past just by putting signs on the window and parking them in the street...

Obviously I know whenever you see a German car with anything that even vaguely possibly loosely suggests that it's bad you will pounce on it... ;)
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Wasn't the German car thing this time. Already knew it was bad, it said "525i" on the back. :p :mrgreen:

What I guess I have to explain is that basically this dealership is so desperate that he's offering to sell to you without any documentation - no proof of identity or solvency is required to purchase or finance a car from him, evidently. Basically, he's marketing to illegal aliens who are off the books.

Where the fail comes in:
1. The sign is in English, a language most illegals in this area (statistically) will have problems with. I saw the other side of the car, too - also in English. No note of Hablo Espanol, either.
2. All of his major competitors run targeted ads (in Spanish) on public transport, public billboards, or simply with fliers at gatherings. Most of the little guys as well. Because that's where people with no cars are going to be. I've not seen any local dealer advertise with (remarkably tacky) magnetic signs on the side of their car in recent memory.
3. It's on a car that's going to get his target market profiled and stopped in a hurry by some police departments, and his target market knows it. So they won't want it.

If he had run the sign in English and Spanish on the side of an SUV, pickup truck or economy car, it might be a good idea. This? This is desperation and fail.
 
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Spectre said:
Wasn't the German car thing this time. Already knew it was bad, it said "525i" on the back. :p :mrgreen:

What I guess I have to explain is that basically this dealership is so desperate that he's offering to sell to you without any documentation - no proof of identity or solvency is required to purchase or finance a car from him, evidently. Basically, he's marketing to illegal aliens who are off the books.

Where the fail comes in:
1. The sign is in English, a language most illegals in this area (statistically) will have problems with. I saw the other side of the car, too - also in English. No note of Hablo Espanol, either.
2. All of his major competitors run targeted ads (in Spanish) on public transport, public billboards, or simply with fliers at gatherings. Most of the little guys as well. Because that's where people with no cars are going to be. I've not seen any dealer advertise with remarkably tacky magnetic signs on the side of their car in recent memory.
3. It's on a car that's going to get his target market profiled and stopped in a hurry by some police departments, and his target market knows it. So they won't want it.

If he had run the sign in English and Spanish on the side of an SUV, pickup truck or economy car, it might be a good idea. This? This is desperation and fail.
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Perhaps should have pointed that out to those of us unfamiliar with the Texan used car market and its relation to the illegal immigrant situation instead of just saying "large magnetic signs". ;)
 
Hbriz said:
Perhaps should have pointed that out to those of us unfamiliar with the Texan used car market and its relation to the illegal immigrant situation instead of just saying "large magnetic signs". ;)
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The illegal immigrant situation is the fail part. Part of the evident desperation is the large ugly magnetic signs on a higher tier car extolling the lower-tier/bottom-feeder-type-services of the dealer, which is going to not make people want to buy it. I've had several car dealers as clients here; the ones that ever discussed it all indicated that they would have to be exceedingly desperate, with all other marketing avenues having failed (tv, radio, print, flyers, billboards, promotions, Craigslist), before they would resort to putting signs like that on cars. (The topic was usually "how can we use the Internet to leverage our existing marketing" when it came up.)

It's about as smart as a Holden dealer slapping big yellow and black signs on their personal Commodore advertising the fact that if you bought that car from him, you would get ten free angry kangaroos.
 
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Anesthesia said:
Again, planning on driving the drivetrain all on itself? You clearly haven't even read the messages I posted earlier. Instead of posting the same line over and over, would you explain why I should ignore everything that effects how the car handles and performs? Or why 300 is decent power, but 290 clearly isn't.

Unless you post a proper response instead of a one line response that could be from "rainman", I'm not going to ignore you.
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Maybe you should actually read what I said before? No matter what you do to the car, no matter the weight, no matter the suspension geometry no matter the electronic aids and no matter the cleverness of the diffs there are some absolutely basic things that have to do with drivetrain layout. They are very well established behaviors of those layouts that cannot be overcome with any type of tuning.

How many mainstream sports cars have under 300hp? (currently available in the US and are still in production) I can't think of anything but a Miata (note FWD's are not sports car I don't care what marketing says).
 
prizrak said:
How many mainstream sports cars have under 300hp? (currently available in the US and are still in production) I can't think of anything but a Miata (note FWD's are not sports car I don't care what marketing says).
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Blanket statement detected.
 
The second car sold, unsurprisingly.

Which moves me on to this...
Next week Im in Leeds, the worst city ever BTW. So i'm looking on Autotrader and spot this in Keighley...

media

media

media

media


?489!!! How is that possible?... and it's the top of the range 2.0 Ti... and it's red... and has teledials. :|


I might have to detour.
 
^^ Just had a look at that on Autotrader to see it better. Its just standard unwanted part-ex - the same as what caused my old Saab to be so cheap. They don't want it and its not worth much to them at all, but you want it and its cheap. The best kind of for sale car. If you are going to look at it make sure you get a good look round it, and start your offer at ?400. :p Looks good.
 
Speedtouch said:
^^ Just had a look at that on Autotrader to see it better. Its just standard unwanted part-ex - the same as what caused my old Saab to be so cheap. They don't want it and its not worth much to them at all, but you want it and its cheap. The best kind of for sale car. If you are going to look at it make sure you get a good look round it, and start your offer at ?400. :p Looks good.
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There are others cheaper, but none that look that nice.
I'm not there until next Thursday. :(

Of course i'll low ball them on a car that they can't get rid of. :D
 
Spectre said:
Tie rods don't usually fail catastrophically without warning. Is there a reason you suspect them?
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I've owned the truck for close to two years, greased them every other oil change, still tight. I don't know the history of the truck other than it's seen the east and west coast. I don't know the age of the tie rods in there. If I keep them greased, should I worry?
 
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Aston Martin said:
?489!!! How is that possible?... and it's the top of the range 2.0 Ti... and it's red... and has teledials. :|

I might have to detour.
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It's Italian, cars built in Italy lose value like a house on fire. It'll probably cost more than that to put it through its next MOT! :p


In other news.

You know how when you open a door window with water beading on it and all the water is pushed off? Why is it that doing that with the Yaris has no effect, on any window? If the seals aren't making contact with the window glass how exactly are they keeping water out?!?!
 
Well they're not. You have drain holes in the bottom of your door where the water is supposed to come out. And a piece of glued plastic around the back of your door card to keep the wet from the interior. As long as the door is properly ventilated (drain holes large enough and not filled with muck) water isn't a problem.

The seals main function is to keep leafs and badgers and stuff from entering the door when the window is rolled up.
 
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If you do plan on keeping that Yaris for a while, I would check the drain holes every two years. Unless you like the sound of the ocean every time you take off from a stand still.
 
I would be all over that Alfa, it's hilarious in a good way.
93Flareside said:
If you do plan on keeping that Yaris for a while, I would check the drain holes every two years. Unless you like the sound of the ocean every time you take off from a stand still.
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So THAT's where the water was hiding in my old Sebring :?
 
thevictor390 said:
I would be all over that Alfa, it's hilarious in a good way.

So THAT's where the water was hiding in my old Sebring :?
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Yep, a pretty common problem actually, had a few friends spend way too much money on getting their cars "fixed" because they kept getting water in the carpets just to discover drains clogged.
 
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