a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  2973 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Car owners of Hubski, what do you drive?

kleinbl00 or b_b might be able to correct me if I'm wrong, but I'd figure since used Subarus retain their value so well, you might get more mileage for your dollar if you just bought new. You might find that the Outback does the job just right for you.





goobster  ·  2973 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Subarus maintain their value right up to 90k miles. Then they tank, because that's when the expensive shit happens. Somewhere between 90-120k, expensive bits way down deep inside the engine need to be replaced. Or they explode.

But up until then? Wonderful cars. (I still miss my Impreza Outback.)

user-inactivated  ·  2973 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Not all of them. :P

That said, I personally say a little prayer that the FA20 is gonna be one of the good ones.

goobster  ·  2972 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Oh. Right.

Living in Seattle I forget there are Subarus other than the Outback and the Forester. :-)

kleinbl00  ·  2973 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Subaru prices are highly localized. They're worthless in LA. In Seattle they hold value impossibly well.

If you like to drive and have a lot of time, energy and liquid cash, you can arbitrage local car markets with reasonable effect. I knew a guy who would buy Hondas in LA and sell them in Seattle and my uncle has bought a few Saturns out of Florida because the price differential between FL and WA is something like 20-30%.

OftenBen  ·  2973 days ago  ·  link  ·  

That's just not feasible sadly. With grad school coming up and a nice little mound of student debt to pay off I'm several years, likely a decade away from a New car.

user-inactivated  ·  2973 days ago  ·  link  ·  

. . . steal one. Who would know?

OftenBen  ·  2973 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I mean.... Lots of people?

user-inactivated  ·  2973 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Well, yeah. If you get caught.

OftenBen  ·  2973 days ago  ·  link  ·  

This prompted a thought.

What are some things that a person could steal that they could reasonably maintain ownership/use of? Not a whole lot, at least nothing big/worth stealing as far as I can tell. Too much technology these days, too much invasion of privacy.

user-inactivated  ·  2973 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Uh, I haven't paid for lip balm in like ten years. What are we talking about?

kleinbl00  ·  2973 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Cars.

Seriously. The crew I ran with kind of went a different direction after I left. One of their friends up in Denver had a brand new pickup he wanted out of the payments on. Paid one of 'em $500 to make it disappear. She literally took the keys and drove it to Albuquerque. They kept it in the garage but they kept it. Tooled around town in it for years.

There's this idea of massive surveillance and police oversight but it's a lie. My wife had her laptop smash'n'grabbed out of her mom's car. I had Prey on it and was able to give the cops the running location and IP. Nobody gave a fuck. She had her phone stolen off the ground as she dropped it and I had a text conversation with the thief, so much as offering him $200 cash to get it back but it was fuckin' gone. Apple, in case you're curious, has zero compunctions about reactivating a stolen iPhone and AT&T doesn't give the first fuck about IMEIs.

you can get away with a lot more than you think.

goobster  ·  2972 days ago  ·  link  ·  

During one two year stretch when I was particularly poor, I would take a photo of someone else's tabs, print it out on my color printer, "laminate" it with Scotch tape, and then glue it onto my car's license plate.

Went without tabs, insurance, or emissions testing for 3 years.

Not proud of that, but the "surveillance state" isn't. They haven't got a clue what is going on right under their noses.