Tesla - How to handle when broken - only in Finland 😂

Rich Cohen

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Not to mention that standard shift cars have grevious discounts on trade-ins.
I was driving my 2012 Volvo C30 when I saw a BMW SUV behind me. As I turned into a parking lot I heard the care behind me honk his horn. A young man in the passenger seat yelled out to me, "Is it manual." "Yes," I said. Then he shouted, "I want to buy that car!" I said, "Not for sale." Honestly, who would want to sell a 2012 Volvo C30 with low mileage and rocket pickup speed, especially after you hit 4,000 rpm's?
 

twocorgis

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I was driving my 2012 Volvo C30 when I saw a BMW SUV behind me. As I turned into a parking lot I heard the care behind me honk his horn. A young man in the passenger seat yelled out to me, "Is it manual." "Yes," I said. Then he shouted, "I want to buy that car!" I said, "Not for sale." Honestly, who would want to sell a 2012 Volvo C30 with low mileage and rocket pickup speed, especially after you hit 4,000 rpm's?
Ha! I have gotten a couple of notes left on my old 2009 535i Sport manual in parking lots from people that want to buy it, and it's definitely not for sale! It was the last of the great 5 series BMWs, and you can't get them with manual transmissions anymore. Heck, you can't even get 3 series BMWs with manuals anymore, that's how lame Americans are.
 

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Ha! I have gotten a couple of notes left on my old 2009 535i Sport manual in parking lots from people that want to buy it, and it's definitely not for sale! It was the last of the great 5 series BMWs, and you can't get them with manual transmissions anymore. Heck, you can't even get 3 series BMWs with manuals anymore, that's how lame Americans are.
You can't get them with a spare tire either. That was the end of BMWs for our family.

Tommy
 
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Rich Cohen

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Ha! I have gotten a couple of notes left on my old 2009 535i Sport manual in parking lots from people that want to buy it, and it's definitely not for sale! It was the last of the great 5 series BMWs, and you can't get them with manual transmissions anymore. Heck, you can't even get 3 series BMWs with manuals anymore, that's how lame Americans are.
I agree. What is BMW and Volvo thinking? I mean, there is probably a small group of us who enjoy driving manual transmission cars. But, the sportier ones really do deliver fun when driven with stick shift....or, maybe it's my fantasy at work. I'm a '60s adolescent, when muscle cars were predominant. Although, even then, I was into European stick shift autos, which was basically only offered in such cars. My dream car when I got my license in 1963 was a Mercedes 300SL Gullwing. I tried very hard to convince my Dad to buy a used one for me, around $6,000. He demurred, saying it was too fast. In the end, he got me a Mercedes 190SL. I test drove a 300SL, with a German tech who had driven for Mercedes in the 1950s. He has a distinct limp. Anyway, we drove through the streets of Monclair, NJ at 80 mpg. My heart was in my throat. The great thing about the 300SL is that it has an overlarge steering wheel. Thus, just a small turn on the wheel would produce a dramatic move of the vehicle. Sublime.
 

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twocorgis

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I agree. What is BMW and Volvo thinking? I mean, there is probably a small group of us who enjoy driving manual transmission cars. But, the sportier ones really do deliver fun when driven with stick shift....or, maybe it's my fantasy at work. I'm a '60s adolescent, when muscle cars were predominant. Although, even then, I was into European stick shift autos, which was basically only offered in such cars. My dream car when I got my license in 1963 was a Mercedes 300SL Gullwing. I tried very hard to convince my Dad to buy a used one for me, around $6,000. He demurred, saying it was too fast. In the end, he got me a Mercedes 190SL. I test drove a 300SL, with a German tech who had driven for Mercedes in the 1950s. He has a distinct limp. Anyway, we drove through the streets of Monclair, NJ at 80 mpg. My heart was in my throat. The great thing about the 300SL is that it has an overlarge steering wheel. Thus, just a small turn on the wheel would produce a dramatic move of the vehicle. Sublime.
Sadly, BMW has largely forgotten their roots, and are making cars for fat old men these days it seems. The don't make a car even remotely like the 2002, which I never owned, but started my love affair with the marque. Heck, they don't even make anything like my beloved '87 325i, which is still one of the greatest cars the company ever made. Nothing even remotely "tossable" in the model range these days, and don't even get me going about those stupid run flat tires. The only way to get a manual in one of their cars here is to buy one of the "M" ("M" is for marketing) cars, and even then I think it's only the 2 and 3 range.

When I was 18, my godmother had a '57 Porsche 356A Speedster that she was willing to sell to me for a ridiculously cheap price, but of course I didn't have the money, and it didn't help that the car was in Atlanta. Her brother had brought it back from Germany, and never drove it again after it swapped ends on him one day (probably a wet downhill bend). He gave it to her, and the car mostly sat, and I remember it vividly, looked just like this one, minus the fog lamps. I think it had less than 10,000 miles on it.

Speedster+Final-2.jpg


My folks might have helped me buy it, but they thought that I would probably kill myself driving it, and they may have been right. It makes me sick when I see how much they sell for these days!

BTW, same godmother also had a gorgeous Mercedes 280SE 3.5, and what a great car that one was, especially in Georgia, which had no speed limit at the time!
 

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He demurred, saying it was too fast....Sublime.
Me, I got a hand-me-down low mileage 1970 Buick GS 455 Stage-1 in high school. Mom wanted something smaller than her old Cadillac to drive around town but ended up not really liking the Buick. She parked it, covered it, and ended up buying another large fully optioned Cadillac. She had no idea how fast the Buick was as her preferred driving speed was 35 MPH. :love:

I worked as a part-time go-for-it at the Buick Cadillac parts/repair department during high school, so I already knew what that Buick was capable of on the street. The sitting duck on the street was the 426 Hemi-powered cars with their leaf-spring suspensions. On the track, it was a different story though.

Tommy
 
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twocorgis

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You can't get them with a spare tire either. That was the end of BMWs for our family.

Tommy
The E60 5 series l own, along with the similar vintage E70 X5, were the last BMWs to have any semblance of a spare tire, and it was optional in the X5. What was even stupider was that if you got the sport package in the 5 series like mine had, it came with run flat tires anyway. I bought mine CPO, and I'm pretty sure those crappy run flats were brand new when I picked up the car in 2012, and they took a long time to wear out (they actually started to dry rot on the inside). What an epiphany it was when I replaced them with a proper set of non run flat Michelin Pilot Super Sports!
 

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The E60 5 series l own, along with the similar vintage E70 X5, were the last BMWs to have any semblance of a spare tire, and it was optional in the X5. What was even stupider was that if you got the sport package in the 5 series like mine had, it came with run flat tires anyway. I bought mine CPO, and I'm pretty sure those crappy run flats were brand new when I picked up the car in 2012, and they took a long time to wear out (they actually started to dry rot on the inside). What an epiphany it was when I replaced them with a proper set of non run flat Michelin Pilot Super Sports!
Yeah, my sister referred to her BMW run-flats as run-craps. When one did go flat, that was the day she discovered that the car had no spare tire. She sold the car shortly after that.

Tommy
 

twocorgis

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Yeah, my sister referred to her BMW run-flats as run-craps. When one did go flat, that was the day she discovered that the car had no spare tire. She sold the car shortly after that.

Tommy
The worst thing about them is the way they destroy wheels. If you hit a pothole with one, guaranteed your wheel is toast, too. BMW was the subject of a class action suit about just that issue. My boss's son had a newer F10 5 series, and it was a good thing he bought the insurance, because he destroyed something like eight wheels! They'll tell you that they do it to save weight, but run flat tires are so heavy (bad for unsprung weight, too) that that argument doesn't hold water. It's all about saving money, and damn the consumer.
 
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