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2016 Audi A7 3.0T S Line, 2021 Subaru WRX
2016 Audi A7 3.0T S Line, 2021 Subaru WRX
As far as I know they don't even have a nanny...
One poor guy I know has had ECU problems on his 360---it just stopped running 6 months ago and all the king's horses and all the king's men, can't get it to run again. Once Ferrari has your money, they can torment you as much as they please, because you have no other choices...
I wish I could find the article, because it was truly frightening how much money this thing cost to keep on the road. It was sold originally for just under $200K and has cost over $1/mile since then - and that's not including the stuff that was covered under the factory warranty.
It's been sold twice as well - the first time for something like $99K (wow - only $100K in depreciation!).
So, in regards to brit's comment about us "regular people", forget it.
250GT Berlinetta Lusso sounds good.
Gee, is all you want is a car? The annual insurance alone must cost as much as a Camcord.
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Most people winning lotteries have no idea what they're setting themselves up for with a large home purchase, cars galore, all have future financial obligations in taxes and upkeep. There's also the personal part. I recall an area lottery winner with a drinking problem. They finally shut him off when he (I think I recall correctly) drove his Corvette on the sidewalk toward a policeman trying to stop him (again) for DUI.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
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Oh yeah, today I saw a blue Benz fintail (could've been a dead ringer for Fintail's car!) and a mid-60's Lincoln convertible. It was one of the later models, with the fussier grille. At first I thought it was a Mercury, until I saw it had 4 doors!
And I saw something else this morning that brought a smile to my face. I was putting the trash out, and a '53 or so Chevy pickup drove by, kinda slow. About 10 minutes later, he drove by again, with the bed loaded up with dirt from the dirt/gravel place up the street. Kinda nice to see an old truck like that still being used as a workhorse. And I'll say it held that cubic yard of topsoil with more dignity and grace than my '85 Silverado does...I made that mistake once, and as a result need a new exhaust system.
Not a fintail but your post reminded me of a 300SD that was being reinvented with a 51 inch diameter homemade metal cone speaker for MythBusters!!! They mounted a horizontal plywood platform instead of the seats to hold the speaker.
They hoped to use the driveshaft to move the speaker up and down to cause enough air pressure to burst the windows out...
Of course it didn't work. The pressure increased great because of the low (18? Hz) while the speaker metal cone went up and down, but the sunroof blew out and leaked the pressure (duh). They should have bolted the sunroof down.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Yeah, I've heard that, too. There's something called the "Lottery Curse", where it seems like many lottery winners ultimately end up with tragedy. I think the biggest problem is that the largest group of people who play the lottery are the poor and those with bad money management skills. So statistically, chances are that someone who wins the lottery isn't going to be prepared to handle that money. Well, if you give a bunch of money to someone who doesn't know how to handle it, they're going to find ways to blow it, or use it in ways that is destructive to their life, etc.
Too often, people only think about the purchase price of an item, and not recurring costs. So if they go and buy a big house, they don't think about property taxes, maintenance, repairs, utilities, insurance, etc. So even if they can afford the item initially, they can't afford to take care of it long-term, so whether it's a house, exotic car, yacht, or whatever, it's not long before it falls into disrepair and/or becomes a financial black hole.
I've heard that with boats, the two happiest days in a boat owner's life are the day he buys it, and the day he sells it. I guess the same can apply to exotic cars you can't afford, extravagant houses, etc.
That mythbusters sounds good...first time I've heard of them messing with a MB. I'll have to look out for that.
Not many odd sightings today...most unusual was this kind of mean looking (and sounding ) 72 T-Bird I see around now and then, with period mags, a subtle hood scoop, in a dark green. The car appears to be very well cared for.
I thought it was interesting that my roommate actually commented on it. He's not the biggest car person in the world, so usually old cars don't catch his eye. He didn't say anything either way, just "ooh, there's an old car!"
I'll never forget the day, a few years ago, when I told him the old car I'm storing for a friend of mine was a Benz. He wasn't around when it got dropped off, and it's under a cover, so he had never seen it. He got all excited though, and ran around behind the shed to take a look. He was a bit disappointed once he peeked under the cover, to see a rusted-out hulk of a '52 220 sedan! :P
I couldn't find a schedule that would tell when they'll be replaying it on Discovery Channel.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
I think I remember the subwoofer segment too, and they determined that as soon as the car interior gets the slightest breach to the outside, ALL the pressure dissipates through that breach, so it's not possible to make a sound system strong enough to trash a car's interior.
Period fog lights for these cars are fairly uncommon. I think I've seen only a couple other fintails wearing them.
Sad about that 220...it's probably barely even useful as a parts car, as there is so little demand for those pieces.
And about the rough road thing, I thought it was no secret that rough roads are less intrustive at high speeds. From experience on I5 traffic jams, I know those expansion bumps are a lot less annoying at 70 than at 10.
rare mopars
As for the rough roads thing, there's this depression in the road on my way home from work that's bad enough that if I'm driving the pickup and hit it at 45-50, the rebound is enough that if it weren't for the seatbelt, I'd hit the ceiling! And on days where my back is already marginal, it would be enough to screw it up for the night! But if I hit it at around 40 or below, while the truck bounces, it's not near as severe. Just for kicks, I tried hitting it at around 60 once, and the truck just sailed right over it.
In my other cars it's not that noticeable, although when the NYer had its exhaust pull loose right behind the converter, to where the pipe was only hanging about 3" off the ground, it would scrape sometimes on that bump.
I don't know what my friend is going to do with his 220. He has another one that he was going to restore, but its in various pieces in boxes in his garage and basement, but I've heard it's been that way for years now. So for all I know, this parts car in my back yard could very well eventually dissolve into the ground before my friend does anything with it!
It's amazing how fast trees and shrubs can grow too, when they're in places you don't want them. Back in early 2004, when my friend had this car towed out, I had cleared a spot for it behind one of my sheds. There was a small stickerball tree and a wild honeysuckle bush growing up in that area, and I just cut them off at the base. Well, the stickerball tree shot back up, and I swear is about 12 feet tall! It's blocking the trunk to the car. And the honeysuckle bush sprouted back up on the passenger side, blocking the doors. Heck, it must be about 8-10 feet tall! I swear, I couldn't get a plant to grow that fast if I wanted it to!
Those 220s have no upside. It's a warmed over prewar style car. If he really has an attachment to them, he should get a sorted out nice one for maybe 10-15K, and just be happy that he has a lifetime supply of parts. That 10-15K car would probably take 30K+ to create from a heap - restoring a fintail looks more sensible.
Were the models with the single headlights actually shorter overall? There's one that shows up at the show in Macungie, PA every year, and I swear it looks a bit shorter in some angles, but then in others it doesn't. I'm thinking it looks a bit shorter just ahead of the cowl, maybe?
Almost all single light models are 4cyl or diesel, save for the odd 230 offered at the end of the fintail reign. All quad light models are 6cyl.
Cornering lights?
It has a V-8, but I didn't know which one it had at first. Looked like an Oldsmobile V-8 in the under-hood pic (the tipoff for me is the raised oil filler cap and tube) The VIN decoder I always used for Pontiacs is actually for Firebirds, so with other cars it can be imprecise. And it didn't list an F-code engine. So I had a bad feeling about this. Went to an Oldsmobile site, and the F-code engine is...(drumroll please)...the 260-2bbl! All 100-110 hp of it! :sick:
Edit: 26 hp/L? Yikes. :surprise: :sick: :mad:
I don't think a fintail driver would have cared about a cornering light. I have to suspect what andre saw was an old school fog light setup.
Oh yeah, the W111 fintail history video finally made it to YouTube
I have trouble sometimes comprehending the need for a V-8 that small. I mean, Chevy had a 267 in the late 70's/early 80's that usually put out 115-125 hp. Pontiac had a 265 that put out around 120, and the Olds 260 put out 100-110. But then, they had the Chevy 229 V-6, that put out 110-115, the Buick 231, which was around 105-110, and the trusty 250 inline-6, which was also around 105-110.
Now the V-8's were probably a bit torquier, and they'd be smoother than the V-6es, but they'd also be heavier, so that seems to me like it would negate any torque advantage.
Is there some other V-8 advantage that I'm missing in this case? The only real advantage to a 260 V-8 in a '76 LeMans that I can see over a 250 inline-6 is that it would be easier to rip out and drop in a REAL V-8! :P
I believe the V6 at the time that ws the 231 had the reputation for the lumpiness, ** ** ** **, for the power strokes. So the V8 was definitely smoother. I don't recall when the even-firing V6 was built...
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Anyway, IIRC, the Caprice, Ford, and Mopar all did 0-60 in around the 12-13 second range, but the poor Cutlass took something like 20 seconds! It doesn't seem like a fair comparison to me, but I guess sometimes CR would just have to take the cars that they could get ahold of. I don't think you could get a Chevy 305 in the '77 Cutlass, so the next engine above the 260 might have been the Olds 350, and maybe CR thought that was too big of an engine by that time?
Studebaker made a V8 in the 50s that was only...something like 223 cid. It was called the Bear Cub V-8!
I like inline 6s the best, and V-12s...both those sound the best to me. V8s are obnoxious and have a weird firing pulse, and flat engines are interesting but aren't much to look at. So for sound, aesthetics, accessibility, I like I-6s.
Wow, Chuck, did you and I end up having all the same cars over our lives? IIRC, you had a '76 LeMans and a '79 New Yorker at one time, too? A 1980 Malibu with a 229 V-6 was my first car!
BTW, the 229 didn't come out until 1980. In 1978-79, the Malibu's standard engine was an ultra-weak 200/3.3 V-6 that put out 95 hp. I don't remember my '80 being all that bad, but then it was my first car, so I didn't have any prior experiences to compare it to. And just about all my friends drove cars that were slower, like a 1980 Accord, 4-cyl Fairmont, 4-cyl Mustangs, Pintos, early 80's Cavaliers, a VW Bug, Renault Alliance, etc. Nobody in my crowd really got a "fast" car until college, when one of my buddies got a brand-new '89 Cavalier Z-24.
One clue as to how slow my Malibu was, though, is that at that time, I thought Granddad's '85 Silverado with a V-8 felt a lot faster. Well, I still have that truck today, and it's a lot slower than I remember. Chances are, my old Malibu would be, too.
Also, I replaced that Malibu with a 1969 Dart GT, which had a slant six. It would blow the doors off that Malibu. Damn, we had some sucky cars back in high school and college!
It's really a shame that GM and the others downsized their engines as they downsized the cars back then. Just imagine if they'd kept the bigger engines in the lighter bodies. For example, in 1977, you could get a 400 or 403 in GM's midsize cars, but you were still looking at a 4,000 pound car with 180-185 hp. The 1978 models were more like 3000-3200 pounds, but for the most part, the biggest engines you could get were a Chevy 305 or Pontiac 301, which put out around 140-150 hp I guess. You could get a 350 in the Malibu, but it was a very rare option. You could also get an Olds 350 in the Cutlass, but I think it only came with the Hurst option, so here they were billing a 160-170 hp engine as a "performance" car.
Or better yet, just imagine if they'd held onto the big-blocks a bit longer, engines like the 454 and 455's, and squeezed those into the downsized midsizers. I've seen Malibus and El Caminos with 454's, so it can be done. Sure, the gov't and the EPA would have had a fit if GM had done that, but it would've helped keep some semblance of performance alive. Those big-blocks were down to around 200 hp by the time they dumped them, but they still had gobs of torque.
Good Lord, that valley girl talk was funny, they did a good job hamming it up! I'm surprised at how mild the accident scene was, though. I mean, doesn't "CHiPs" physics pretty much dictate that Ford pickup would clip the Catalina in back, vault into the air, roll on its roof, and then cause a 15-20 car pile-up, while a tractor trailer full of nitroglycerine is coming the other way and gets caught up in the congestion? Then Ponch and Jon's cousin from the final season save the day at the last minute? Oh yeah, I think there needs to be a circus truck in there somewhere too, with a cage that falls off and releases a hungry lion. :P
Your right it was the 200 V-6. That car was really bad. It makes you wonder what the General was thinking...95 horses in a 2500+ pound car?