Just a thought on buying a new car, vs restoring or buying a restored old car

:banghead3:

 

No, seriously, I am ENTIRELY confused as to what you where speaking of and how it relates to my rant. Care to elaborate the meaning of your trek into obscurity? Or will it be a mind boggling enigma for the rest of time? I'm leaning t'wards the latter option. I'm not a fan of obfuscated statements, my friend.

 

Time will tell. Then again we may never live long enough to see some of the changes some people warn about. Check the video and decide for yourself. My one track mind has been temporarily derailed.
As for fixing up an old car versus spending more and more on new ones, only a few actually follow their dreams.

 

I'll take the old car. Every time, no question. When something does break, chances are I can fix it, or at least have it fixed for a reasonable amount of money. Shocks for my old Fords are $38 each at the local Ford dealer. My boss' wife has an Envoy, and when her automatic leveling suspension decided to quit, the bill was $1,500! Nope. Not a hope. As for gas mileage, I remember when the Escape Hybrid hit the market here. One of the local tv weather forecasters rented one when family came from out of town. He was quite happy with the gas mileage. It was slightly WORSE than I was getting in my 78 Thunderbird with the 351M! Touch screens should be outlawed, as there is no intuitive way to use them. You have no choice but to look at the screen to make sure you touch the right part of the right menu. Talk about a distraction! I can buy, fix, and modify for economy, a 1980 Colony Park for half the price of a new Prius. That is the way I intend to go, too. No payments.

 

Oh, I should add that my daily commute is between 100 and 200 miles round trip. At the moment, I am in an 03 Cavalier with over 250,000 miles on it. It may be on borrowed time. I have seen the big old V-8s still dead reliable at well over 500,000 miles, and one 91 Crown that it coming up on 1,000,000 miles. The original owner insists he will be buried in the thing, since it has been so dead reliable this far.

 

Yeah if I wanted fuel economy I'd take an old Datsun 810 like my mother had when I was a kid (1979, tan, dead reliable until it overheated once and the thermostat housing would not budge) and swap in a more modern 4cyl out of say, a 240SX. Would have a turbocharged toy, with about 250HP, that gets about 27MPG in town, and nearly 40 on the highway. Who needs a damn Prius? In that thing I could smoke some drag cars. It's on my to do list, and I've still got many years, so it will likely happen. And if the 240SX that the 4cyl comes out of is a solid donor car, then the world will see another LS powered 240SX.

I know those motors are dead reliable, my neighbor used JDM turbochargers on a 240 (with a JDM Silvia front end, that's Japanese Domestic Market, as in, it came on a forklift pallet from japan) he built, sure it was rice-ish, but it was done right. He didn't have it flashed up or anything, engine bay looked mostly stock, couldn't clear an anthill, but holy crap was it fast. Sucker could hit 70 in about 4 seconds. Wasn't my kind of car at all, rode too harsh, as I said, couldn't clear an anthill, had ZERO traction in the rain, he wouldn't even drive it in the rain. Was like a 2nd gen Camaro someone dropped a built 350 into when it comes to traction.

Also, I do not have fond memories of the 351M, ours sprang a leak at the back of the carb and the top end caught fire in the 1978 LTD wagon we had.