There’s a saying out there that one of the most expensive cars that you can buy is a highly depreciated German car. Sure, these cars are cheap to buy, but the repairs catch up to you pretty quickly. Someone has to be the first, second, or maybe third owner first before you meet that glorious hooptie at the bottom of its depreciation curve.
Thomas wrote about the Mercedes-AMG E53 Wagon, a ride that would cost you $94,500 if you buy it new. But I have a feeling few Autopians would be buying it new. Huja Shaw:
See you in three years, my Certified-Preowned Beauty.
Then, when Huja Shaw sells, I’ll buy you in 20 years, my Facebook Marketplace bargain basement beauty.
I gave you an Autopian Asks with the question of choosing a garage to fill up with vehicles adding up to no more than 10 wheels. Luxobarge:
Ten Goodyear blimps.
Further research has revealed that the newest blimps actually have two wheels–one under the gondola and one closer to the tail–so I will either accept ten of the older-style unicycle blimps or (reluctantly) merely five of the newer ones.
Eggsalad got creative:
An Aptera, a Can-Am Spyder, a Polaris Slingshot, and a mono-wheel skateboard!
As did ChefCJ:
3 Reliant Robins and a unicycle. It’s the only sensible answer
Alexk98 found a loophole:
Of course, one working, reliable car, and ~4 cars with never more than one wheel installed at a given time, if any at all, so in theory I can boy-math my way to 2 functional vehicles, and several jack-stand occupying to-do lists.
Mark wrote a Shitbox Showdown between a Ford Probe and a Plymouth Voyager. Honestly, I’m impressed our readers somehow made a Star Trek: The Motion Picture reference. Zeppelopod:
We sent out a Probe, and centuries later it returned…as V-ger.
Church:
I give you a star, but it is begrudgingly. You are thin ice with that one. In the future please limit references to even numbered movies only.
Zeppelopod:
Whale do, chief! First post was a fluke; I promise it won’t happen again on porpoise.
Rob Stercraw:
Looks like you did a little too much LDS in the 60’s.
Finally, Brian wrote about how Ford owners seem to like their cars more than Tesla owners. Goose:
I’m always surprised at how many people just get the same thing over and over and over and never shop the competition. My parents are one of them even. They are on like F150 number 5 and haven’t shopped a Silverado or Ram since they first started getting Fords. Every 3 years they turn in their lease and basically ask the dealer for a new version of what they had. If it’s on the lot, great, if not, they’ll extend their lease a few weeks/months to get what they want. They’ll never look at anything else and it’s insane to me.
Yeah, brand loyalty is weird. Look, don’t look at how many Smarts I own. Have a great evening, everyone!
I am brand loyal to Mazda. I have shopped Nissan (not for me thankfully) and I have a great relationship with my dealer (thankfully for me) and there just isn’t really much else that interests me out there. I am hoping with my last round of car purchases, the cycle slows down a bit but anything next will be in the 10-15 year old range at least
Big Parsh got me hook, line and stinker.
I’m in my 3rd 2001 Audi S4. They’ve been my daily driver since 2002. (The second and 3rd are Avants (wagons) and being able to haul a couple kayaks and weeks worth of camping gear in a 460HP highway cruiser that’s also AWD is pretty handy.). I do as much of my mechanicing myself as I can and so aside from being a great car for my needs/lifestyle I’ve learned their intricacies and how to work on them. That era is also the perfect balance between new enough that you can plug in a computer and it’ll give you a pretty good idea of what’s wrong and old enough that it’s still fairly simple mechanically.
That era of Audi is among one of my favorites! Being familiar with a model/platform and being able to DIY is a superpower. I used to have an 03 E46 that I did all my own maintenance on, and it was remarkably easy to work on, and trouble-free for me
“Is it available?” messages will be ignored, Mercedes.
Thank you. I try not to go hunting for COTD, but I knew when I demanded half a score of blimps that it would be catnip to Mercedes.
Imagine the humble brag of even just “having a brace of blimps” at home…let alone 6+ blimps.
Big blimpin’, spending G’s. Isn’t that an old Jay-Z song?
The closest I have seen to that was meeting my neighbor 25 and finding out he owned six hovercrafts.
He’s livin’ the dream. A zero wheel garage.
He was like 85 years old and had started a hovercraft company in the 70s. He fully expected to replace automobiles with hovercrafts and, no joke, pulled me into his house to watch a VHS copy of the promotional video and the TV commercial he ran on broadcast TV for his company. It was wild.
I like his optimism, but in dusty or snowy places I doubt it would work very well as personal transportation.
Oh man, the promo was hilarious, because it put forth a scenario where your work and home are on opposite sides of a lake. Instead of driving around the lake, you drive across it! It even had a scenario where the lake was frozen and the blizzard it left behind it was severe.
Ah yes, most folks can afford their home AND their employer to have lakefront property. Maybe in Finland, I hear they have over 1million lakes.
Right?! It fascinating to watch his honest astonishment at not selling more of them, completely out of touch with what was going on in the world when his company collapsed in the late 70s.
I will say, his garage was fascinating, as he not only had two of them in there, but shelves and shelves of parts for them. The bodies of the two he had at his were fiberglass with sparkly gel coats like 70’s speed boats, complete with gold pinstriping with the company name hand stenciled in with the pinstripe. It was like a time machine into an alternate universe…
His garage sounds like the perfect Jason Drives episode.
It would be, were the guy still around. At this point he would probably be around 115 years old, so I assume most of what he had was sent to the scrap yard decades ago.
Doh! That was supposed to be “neighbor 25 years ago”.