I bought a car yesterday (as seen below). I’ll do the full reveal and write-up for you tomorrow. For now, let’s talk about all the things I considered buying but didn’t, and how it might help you make your own buying decision in the future.
And yes, I bought it. I didn’t lease. We’ll discuss that tomorrow, too.
Finding an E30 M3 isn’t particularly hard.
Unlike contemporaries such as the Audi Quattro, locating a good example on any given day of the week is easy. eBay has no less than seven for sale at the time of writing, all in generally good shape. Specialists such as Enthusiast Auto Group (EAG) have the same number, none of which would be unwelcome at a high-brow show. Since BMW brought over 5,000 of these homologation specials to the U.S. market, you don’t need to search long and hard to find exactly the E30 M3 you want.
Paying for it is another matter entirely.
Chris writes:
I was wondering where to get advice for a free car I’m about to acquire …
The car in question: a 1991 Ford Tempo LX with a four-banger and automatic transmission — not exactly a racer or show car. My dad used it as a work beater for the last 13 years so he didn’t have to drive his garage queen Cadillac. Now that he’s about to retire, he no longer needs it and has decided to give it to me to do with as I please.
The origins of this series focused on wheels inhabiting the dank basements of the price scale for particular models. This suggestion, then, helpfully sent in by a member of the B&B, doesn’t appear to fit that measure.
However, I and a few others consider the ST to be a model unto itself, not unlike the manner in which Volkswagen treats the almighty GTI in the Golf lineup. So, what can buyers expect in a No Frills model of the Ford Focus ST?
If you follow the auto-journo cool kids on Twitter… get a life! Seriously! Go out and learn to fly an airplane! Take your children camping! Volunteer at your local soup kitchen this November and help the homeless make it through Thanksgiving with dignity!
Anyway, there were a few dramatic Tweetstorms and whatnot lately. The first one is partially recapitulated above. Occasional Motor Trend contributor and brand advocate for Castrol and Meguiar’s, Jessi Lang, decided to dig up some old tweet by The Smoking Tire’s Matt Farah. I suspect she did this because Matt’s star is rising while her own personal profile in the business spiked a long time ago. You have to take your opportunities at self-promotion where you can get them. Read More >
Update: It looks like we’re in the clear. If you notice anything broken with the site, email me at mstevenson@ttac.com.
We’re currently working on a site issue that’s restricting the ability of many of you to scroll pages. When it’s cleared up, we’ll update this post.
Thanks for hanging in there.
James writes:
I seem to find myself in an endless car-buying cycle of “I’ll finally be content if I buy X car”; get said car, get a year into ownership and dammit — I want a different car! Buyers remorse at its finest.
I don’t know what it is when it comes to cars, but I seem to have this blind spot for knowing what the heck I really want in the car, unlike everything else in life. Sigh.
In September 2016, for the first time since October 2014, the Chevrolet Camaro outsold the Ford Mustang in the United States.
Year-over-year, Chevrolet Camaro sales jumped 25 percent to a five-year September high of 6,577.
With the worst Ford Mustang decline since (not coincidentally) October 2014, the Blue Oval’s pony car saw its share of the three-car Detroit pony/muscle car sector fall by 15 points to 34 percent.
Thus, the Camaro wins. Over the span of one month. By a small margin. Read More >
September 2016 auto sales slid nearly 1 percent, not as rough an outcome as projected by many industry analysts but more proof that the auto industry may have peaked in calendar year 2015.
Despite bright spots from Ram, Buick, and Infiniti, most of the year-over-year improvements reported by automakers in September were modest in size. Porsche, Lincoln, Toyota, Honda, Audi, and Volvo all combined for sub-2-percent increases. Mercedes-Benz, Subaru, Cadillac, Hyundai, and Lexus couldn’t quite manage 4-percent upticks.
Yet in a market that slowed for a second consecutive month, many of the gains produced by pickup truck sales still weren’t strong enough to bring more buyers into showrooms than in September 2015. Read More >
If you were to take a moment to ponder the death of the wagon in America and had to put a timeline on when it all started, quite a few people would wager it arrived in the 1990s. That timeline makes a lot of sense, since that’s when the SUV craze really started to take off. But there isn’t a specific date when it all came crashing down, and that’s frustrating as a historian.
We can nail down the end of the Roman Empire to the year that Odoacer overthrew Romulus Augustus (476, if you were concerned), but there was never an “okay, no more wagons starting now” moment in our country.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the highlights of the longroof market in the Naughts.
The Dodge D-series trucks were getting embarrassingly dated by the late 1960s, with their solid-axle front suspensions and archaic styling, so Chrysler created the third-generation D-series pickups for the 1972 model year.
Here’s a reasonably solid three-quarter-ton from the first year of that generation, spotted in a Denver self-service yard. Read More >
Volkswagen AG is making nice with its once-ornery U.S. dealer network to the tune of $1.85 million per dealer.
The automaker announced details of its $1.21 billion dealer settlement late yesterday, Reuters reports, with cash payouts to its 652 dealers spread out over the next 18 months. Meanwhile, once-loyal Volkswagen owners have hopped on the buyout bandwagon in big numbers. Read More >
Dear Florida,
We need to talk. You’re a good state. Really, you are. I love your beaches. There’s the delightful lilt of latin accents everywhere. Daytona is the place where motorsports royalty is crowned in America. Sebring is the place of legends. And who doesn’t love Disney World?
But we need to talk about your car situation. It’s just flat-out embarrassing. All of your friends are talking about it. I think it’s time we had a an open, honest conversation, and maybe we can solve this problem together.
Not every hero gets a statue, and not every brilliant accomplishment gets a plaque. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, and many a spectacular occurrence is forgotten the moment after it happens.
This is the story of a sheetmetal worker who built a car to nearly unimaginable standards of precision and perfection … then decided to walk away from it for reasons that only he can understand.
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