The Born Loser by Art and Chip Sansom for August 29, 2021

Was the old lady from Pasadena?…..

Just the car facts, please.

Did the odometer Agree with her driving habits?

If only she had Garmin, then she would not have ended up in a lake. Those GPS makers are always right.

Omg, let me know when Brutus wants to sell his used car. Do you know how hard it is to find a bright red painted car with an olive green dashboard and steering wheel?

along with smashing into convenience stores and each other’s cars, folks here regularly oops! drive off piers, improving the gene pool considerably…

I am not seeing any ads for 2022 cars. OTOH I have seen several local car dealers advertise their 2021s and ads about them looking to buy used cars. I guess the problem of not enough microchips continues

I actually did by a car from a little old lady who only drove it to church. And I know it was the truth because it was my mom and that was about the only place she went by herself. The rest was with my dad and he always drove their van.

I’ve never bought a truly new car, though there was this demo that I bought. But, though it was beautiful and a joy to drive at first, it was a lemon and gave nothing but trouble. After that, I only bought used. That may change, though, with the latest Ford F150 Lightning, which is an EV and a base price of less than $40K. Amazing. The truck and the price.

But the drivers seat needed replacement as it was permanently soiled. By what is best left unsaid.

Nothing against a newer used car. Just be sure to do all the required maintenance. I always buy new and fully maintain my cars. Last 4 vehicles that I owned and gave away still running had between 250-300,000 miles each.

My very first car was used, very used. It was a ’55 Buick, and I haggled the guy down from $85 to $35. It was loud, burned oil, drove like a tank, and I had to pump the brakes once before they “engaged”, but I loved it. One day, it got sideswiped while it was parked, and the right end of the front bumper was bent so that it was sticking out. A friend and I pounded on that bumper with sledge-hammers until it came off, and boy did that front-end look cool after that! I drove it for years, until I got another used car, and I gave the Buick to my sister for her 16th birthday. A couple of years later, she got another car, and my car had turned out to be a lemon, so I got the Buick back and drove it for a couple more years! (I just had to do it with little flower stickers all over the dash…)

I wonder if Uncle Ted learned that story before or after he shelled out the cash to the little old lady?

Don’t let a clean engine fool you. They can take it to a car wash and steam clean the engine.

The engine was clean, except for the algae.

I buy a lot of used things, but I just can’t bring myself to buy a used car. I know that new cars depreciate rapidly once they’re driven away from the dealer’s lot, but I’ll take that hit.

With all the floods and hurricanes we have been having, I am sure there are soon going to be a lot of used cars with clean engines on the market. The electrical systems on the cars, maybe not so good.

We were looking at used cars a few months after Hurricane Katrina. One looked pretty nice, low miles, and decent price. But the metal under the seats and a few other hard-to-spot places was very rusted. I’m convinced that it had been flooded during the hurricane. The dealer tried to tell me that Florida is so humid that all cars end up looking that way. I know that this isn’t true.

Earlier this month I found really good used car – a 2015 Subaru Outback with just under 28K miles. Between what the dealer was telling me, the Carfax, and a little detective work on the DMV website, I was able to verify that it was a everything I was seeing and hearing. It had been owned by an older couple who traded it in, only because they wanted to buy a new Subaru. It was a much better deal than newer vehicles with higher mileage and sometimes a few issues. Used? It’s barely broken in!