Tag: cars

Holy shit

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I almost couldn’t believe it when I saw this, before I filled up my tank (for the first time since Wednesday). $140.00 to fill up someone’s car? Jesus Christ. And the thing is, I think that the vehicle being filled still wasn’t at full capacity, because of the unlikely event that the car was able to hit approximately $140.00 even on the pump. But no matter, $140.00 is ridiculous. I balked at the notion that filling my new car still encroached into the $40.00 territory, solely based on the asinine price of gas in the first place, but to stamp a Benjamin on top of that, I might as well just kill myself if that were my fate, because there’s no way I’d be able to sustain such fuel costs with how much I’m required to drive in the first place.

To put it in perspective, I’m going to assume that the vehicle is obviously in the class of a Ford Excursion, or super-crew Chevy Silverado, or something along those lines, based on the 35+ gallon fuel capacity. On a good day, these guys are averaging anywhere from 15-17 mpgs, so they’re getting anywhere from 540-600 miles on a tank of gas. Based on where I was filling up from, and the notion that most people work out in the city of Atlanta, or at least from where I was, not there, so I’m going to guess that if these people were like me, they’re putting anywhere around 300-400 miles on their vehicle during a five-day work week. Factor in recreational/weekend driving, and we’re looking at possibly the necessity to fill up once a week. At $140.00 a fill up.

In 1993, my parents bought me a Sega Genesis at a Price Club, for roughly $140.00. Think about that for a second – basically, whatever guzzler this person is driving could have literally bought an entire video game console, with a second controller and Ecco the Dolphin, every single week, for what they’re paying for in gasoline. Fuckin’ crazy.

The cost of car sanity

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The guy I suspect is gay, who sits in the cube behind where I’m currently sitting, bought a car, literally two days before I purchased mine.  Despite the fact that while talking cars two weeks prior to our respective purchases, and me mentioning just how much I regretted purchasing a used car, and that crooked people will pay crooked mechanics crooked money in order to have things not appear on CarFaxes, he still went out and purchased a used car.  A Volkswagen Cabrio, no less, which further justifies my suspicions about his sexual orientation, despite the fact that he has a wife and two kids.

But anyway, I thought I got a lot of flak for buying a car that was seven years old, but he went out and purchased a car that was discontinued outright in 2002.  Granted, his rationale was simply the fact that he did not want to have a car payment at all, which I can understand, but after the misery I just recently left behind, I’m fairly confident that there’s a very good chance that even my next-next car will be new, even if it means I’m locked into a car loan for several years, at least I’ll have the piece of mind that for all intents and purposes, I shouldn’t have to worry about my car, for at least a year or so.

Today, he’s already griping about how his window is stuck down, which is kind of amazing, considering his model is power-nothing, so there’s no regulators or window engines to have malfunctioned, simply his window crank is locked in place, and he can’t fix it.  Furthermore, the lock cylinder in one of his doors is already broken, meaning he’s having to enter his car through the passenger seat.  Man shit, even in the lemon, did I not have these kind of problems.  Regardless, it’s this kind of backlash, that despite the fact that I’ll be dumping a lot of money into a car payment for a lot of months, I still take solace in the fact that when we both leave work today, I’ll be sitting on my cozy leather-heated seats, with the functioning windows, while he’ll be chilly and miserable driving home to his week-old broken, already junker.

The story of how I got the price of my car to where I got it, in wrestling speak

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Obviously, in the process of buying a car, nobody goes to a car dealership, finds the car they want, and immediately agrees to pay approximately what’s written on the sticker of the vehicle.  Fuck that.  And in the case of my recent car purchase, I most certainly did not pay the listed price that was posted on the vehicle I ultimately ended up with.  I paid significantly less was posted; perhaps I could have done better if I had a little bit of time on my side, but I didn’t, but I’m fairly satisfied with the whole process in the short amount of time in which I accomplished it.  But suffice to say, it wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t speak with many different parties.

After sniffing around for the car I wanted, I discovered that it was available at Big Boss Man’s dealership.  Right then, I decided that the Big Boss Man was ultimately going to be my primary target of where I wanted to purchase, since they had the exact car, with all the features I wanted, right there, ripe for the taking.  However, I didn’t want to pay close to the sticker price on it, so in order to play ball, I knew I had to get some other parties into the fracas.  So, I inquired with Buff Bagwell, Muhammad Hassan, Stevie Ray, K-Kwik, and Konnan’s dealerships, to see what estimates they would be willing to give me for the same car, regardless of the fact that I knew not one of them had what I was looking for in their current inventories, but it wouldn’t be impossible for any of them to acquire what I was looking for in order to gain my business.  And to make things interesting, I decided to reach out to the distanced Ric Flair’s dealership, in order to have an unknown ace in my pocket for negotiation purposes.

Continue reading “The story of how I got the price of my car to where I got it, in wrestling speak” →

This road to recovery was built in Korea

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This is my new car.  A Kia Forte 5-Door.

At my absolute wit’s end, I finally decided to cut my losses, and ditch the lemon.  I had an elaborate plan with a minimal window of time to accomplish it, and in a perfect world it would have gone completely as planned, but since we don’t live in a perfect world, this would have to do.  The bottom line is that I have successfully unloaded the fucking lemon, I don’t drive it anymore, and no longer will it give me stress about how much it mechanically sucks, or what no-longer produced parts need to be replaced.

I’m ecstatic that I have a brand new car, that theoretically, I will not really have to worry about (knock on wood) for a little bit, but I’m actually simply more relieved that I just don’t have the lemon anymore.

Continue reading “This road to recovery was built in Korea” →

The downside to beautiful weather

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Is that every single person on the planet with a car, truck, bike or any form of automotive transportation is on the road, leading to some unexpected catastrophic traffic. People – they ruin everything.

In other news, I test drove manual transmissions of the two front runners, and I think I really like one of them. It’ll be a hectic next few days to see if I can make everything work out. It’ll take a lot of after hours work, but I think it could just happen.

What is wrong with you people

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I feel like Woody Harrelson in zombieland, but instead of the futile search for a twinkie, it’s the futile search for fucking manual transmission cars to test drive this weekend. Seriously, I’ve literally found only one car out of the five candidates I’d like to test out, and that’s between many dealerships. Jesus christ, you’d think a city with 4 million black people would have more stick shifts, but I guess they’re all already bought and/or stolen by now.

Car bitching, #7,201

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

For the record, I officially regret purchasing my 2003 Mazda6.  For the record, I wish I plunked down the $1,500 last year, and replaced the O2 sensor on my prior SR20 Sentra, and probably kept driving it for at least another 20,000 miles, without any car payments, to this point.  But I was cash-strapped and foolish back then.  And compared to now, when I’m still cash-strapped, but feeling more foolish, and factually handcuffed to the remainder of my car loan that I will have the uphill battle in trying to eliminate before seeking out a new car.

If all goes well, this weekend, I’ll test drive a car, that isn’t too expensive, has anywhere from 50-62% of the power output of the lemon, but 25% better fuel economy, and isn’t, well, the lemon.  And then hopefully sooner, rather than later, I’ll sign my balls away for 60 months, but at least have a brand new car, that I won’t have to fret and worry about, for at least one full year, hopefully.

But for the record, the acquisition of the lemon, certainly goes up on the list as one of the biggest mistakes of my life, and I’m not just being dramatic.  I consider it an invaluable lesson learned –  that mechanics are incompetent, CarFaxes are bullshit, and strange haji Middle-Eastern rock-lot dealers have the power of the genie’s lamp to make any car seem better than it really is for at least a few months, before it turns back into putrid garbage.  For the record, I wish I plunked down the money to fix my old car, and kept it, or at least used it then, to have acquired a brand new, reliable car, that I’d have already paid 15 months of my car loan off by now, instead of the lemon.

I don’t often have many regrets, but damn is this certainly one of the biggest.