I have a 2012 Civic. Its a good car. Pretty good snow car even. Highly recommended.
I used to have a White 1970 Nova, black interior, with a 350 V8 and dual exhausts, fat tires, mags.
It was cool as hell and in good shape, but still a money pit. So I sold it on Ebay. I almost never drive now. Once a week tops,
and now that my dad died, just short little jaunts.

I like cars. Always have.

I found a decent number of good deals on craigslist last year, and ended up buying a used CX-9 that I'm very happy with. Although I live in DC and the economy has been pretty stable.

Mustangs are girl cars. Except the green fastback one in Bullit. Thats badas$. ;-)

there isn't any law prohibiting street parking (or wasn't). it was the fact the plates were expired so they noticed.

Its an often-overlooked fact that your car has to be registered/licensed to be parked on the street. But I'm able to put that into an "Ignorance of the law is no excuse" buckets. Presumably the car registration is paying for maintenance of that street that its parked on.

I was all ready to buy used when I went car shopping last year. I found the gap between the used car price and the new car price simply wasn't large enough (it was barely noticable) to justify buying a used car.

From a dealer, or from a private sale? I'm not surprised there's no deals to be had on a used car from a dealer.

but that whenever I drive one I just can't help myself from trying to get at least 50 MPG. On the plus side, it means I'll never get a speeding ticket.

Yeah, that's a fun incentive factor of the car -- MPG shaming/achievement. I recently read an article somewhere that does the same thing with home energy usage -- comparing you to your neighbors and giving you a smiley-face on your bill when you do well. Little things have dramatic effects on conservation.

Its an often-overlooked fact that your car has to be registered/licensed to be parked on the street.

It also needs to have a current inspection sticker - I found out the hard way once.

From a dealer, or from a private sale? I'm not surprised there's no deals to be had on a used car from a dealer.

In my case, I wasn't looking at private. I drive 25,000 miles a year, so I was looking specifically for a very low-mileage used car. The price gap betwen new and used in that category was virtually non-existent. I doubt that would have changed much in a private sale, though I could be wrong.

I recently read an article somewhere that does the same thing with home energy usage -- comparing you to your neighbors and giving you a smiley-face on your bill when you do well.

Yeah, they try to shame us almost every month in a usage comparison to our neighbors. Since none of our immediate neighbors have more people in their homes as us, I don't give it a hell of a lot of thought.

i guess i am a bit thickheaded as i think a taxpayer deserves a bit better treatment from a govt agency than to have his car towed when it's not blocking access nor an eyesore. ticket it? fine. ticket it up the wazoo. but tow it, etc right away? that just seems excessive.

[59] That's fair. At some point it has to get towed, right? But I don't know how long that was.

[58] That was my experience with relatively-new-cars from a dealer too. I think to play the cheap-used-car game, you're buying 6-10 years old from someone replacing their car without trading it in.

smileyy

well, my friend is not prone to hyperbole, he brought the car home on a tuesday, left for mexico on wednesday and by monday had gotten the panicked call from his aged mother and discovered the car was in the impound lot. and people complain about the inefficiency of govt.

best he could tell is the car got ticketed on wednesday and towed on friday. but that's from my memory which on non-baseball, non-financial, non harvey stories is subject to some variance.

it was the last phone call when he told me the car was destroyed that really sticks with me. he was so disappointed. he wanted to recreate this photo he had with his dad from when his dad first got the car where he and his father were sitting in the car all set to hit the highway. he wanted to have his oldest son sitting next to him in the same setup.

yeah, i don't get sentimentality either but it works for some people...................

Leasing is all about the math.

My wife likes to change vehicles frequently, but of course leaves the $$ part up to me. Over the years I've both purchased & leased cars for her, but good deals on leases have largely gone away. For a while in the late 90's/early 00's the captive finance cos had stupidly high residual value assumptions on their leases and one could score a great deal if you knew how to shop. They've over-corrected that error, at least that's what it appears to me the few times I've sharpened my pencil in recent years, so the last 2 she's wanted I've paid cash for.

I should have guessed this wasn't 63 posts about Arroyo. Him and Bellhorn were my favorite players on the 2004 Red Sox and I was really disappointed when they traded him for WMP.