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wesleywillis posted:E: Also, 17k for a used car will probably actually get you something better than a 17k new car. seriously?
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# ? Oct 8, 2021 05:08 |
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# ? Apr 24, 2024 23:02 |
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Is there an accepted rule of thumb for how much car you can reasonably afford, as a percentage of gross salary or income? My personal limit has generally been to keep the price under 2/3 of my annual gross salary. (I typically buy a new car about every 6-7 years.) But everyone's priorities and cash flows are different.
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# ? Oct 8, 2021 06:01 |
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Mr Interweb posted:seriously? Yes. The pickings for under $17k new (and that's assuming $17k advertised price, not $17k OTD) are slim. Searching Autotrader for new cars up to $17k returns absolutely nothing but stripper-model Kia Rios and a couple of Chevy Sparks, and only a single page of results in a major metro area. Same price on used cars 2018 and newer returns nearly 500 cars, including some Toyota Corollas, Yarises, and one particularly high-mileage Camry. Also a handful of Mazdas and Hondas. Any of those will be better than a zero-mile Rio or Spark, and probably last longer too. Allowing up to 10 year old cars adds in a bunch of 2013-2015 Toyota hybrids (Priuses of all styles, and a few Camrys) which are loving bulletproof.
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# ? Oct 8, 2021 07:38 |
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Number_6 posted:Is there an accepted rule of thumb for how much car you can reasonably afford, as a percentage of gross salary or income? My personal limit has generally been to keep the price under 2/3 of my annual gross salary. (I typically buy a new car about every 6-7 years.) But everyone's priorities and cash flows are different. Since most people are budgeting for weeks and months instead of years and don't know what capex is, 20/4/10 keeps most people in the straight and narrow in a language they understand even if there's a huge range of budgets and options outside of it that are still acceptable expenditures.
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# ? Oct 8, 2021 10:37 |
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knox_harrington posted:
you live in a place with good pensions and a robust social safety net and I assume the OP lives in and since your 1/5th of income car was a lot more expensive than a Model 3 in absolute terms you've got a lot more wiggle room. I don't feel like the OP is in a good (enough) place financially but I do tend towards conservatism on these things. KillHour posted:You should put them on BaT as a joke. there was a buick terazza or some poo poo on there recently, it ruled
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# ? Oct 9, 2021 17:12 |
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IOwnCalculus posted:Yes. The pickings for under $17k new (and that's assuming $17k advertised price, not $17k OTD) are slim. Searching Autotrader for new cars up to $17k returns absolutely nothing but stripper-model Kia Rios and a couple of Chevy Sparks, and only a single page of results in a major metro area. just curious, is there anything that makes those particular cars a bad value? cheap parts, etc? so tell me what you guys think of this. i was talking it over with the madre, and while i've become open to the idea of buying even a $17k+ used car, she doesn't think we need anything right now that costs that. as it is right now, 95% of our driving needs are local. i work from home so i don't need to commute and we're not the kind who do constant road trips or anything that requires a lot of travel time. i'd like to get a much better quality car sometime in the future, but for the near term, is there anything wrong if i get something like this: https://www.carfax.com/vehicle/JTDBR32E370121611 The carfax report seems to be pretty positive mostly. the biggest issue seems to be that it had multiple owners, but it is also a 14 year old car so maybe that's okay?
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# ? Oct 11, 2021 00:59 |
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I'm curious to get some peoples opinions and let me know if this is the place or not. My wife and I have been debating a second car for convenience. We've got an 08 4runner with 200k miles and I take it to the mountains all the time. We both work from home 90% of the time but I go in occasionally. No kids yet but we have a dog and live in Seattle. The second car would come in handy when I'm up skiing or backpacking for a week and my wife has a set of wheels to get around. If we have a kid, the second car is basically mandatory. My sister in law and her husband acquired a 2006 prius (80k miles) from his great aunt who have no use for it as they already have two vehicles so we're considering buying it from them. They live in Utah and drove it for a little while this summer to commute. They've offered it to us for ~$6k and I was hesitant at first. Initially I didn't want a prius, but the more I thought about it, its about as cheap and reliable of a second car as you could ask for. Obviously we won't take it skiing or backpacking but now neither of us will be stuck without a car when the other is away. It was owned by an old lady and only drove it occasionally hence the low mileage. The underside has some light rust but you can still see all the sides of the fastener heads so I'm not too upset with that. The only real concern I have is for the hybrid battery life. It seems to have a typical lifespan of 10 years (car is 15 years old) or 100-150k miles. I can buy a replacement for $1500-2k and do it myself which looks relatively straightforward with about 2 hours of work. Having a shop do it easily doubles the price which might render the car less of a deal. My wife and I are leaning towards buying it because I think its too good of a deal to pass up. Comparable cars look to be selling for ~$7k-8k for that low of mileage so anywhere between 5-6k seems pretty good. This seems like a great deal right? Any major issues I need to worry about specific to a prius?
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# ? Oct 11, 2021 23:50 |
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Mr Interweb posted:just curious, is there anything that makes those particular cars a bad value? cheap parts, etc? The Spark is GM's attempt to build the cheapest viable car possible and it shows. GM can build good vehicles but that's reserved for their products where the beancounters don't make every single decision. The issue with new cars at the bottom of the market is that they are incredibly price-engineered to minimize every and all possible costs. Buying a two year old used compact car (Civic/Corolla/Mazda3, gently caress even a Cruze or a Forte) is going to be a quieter, more comfortable car with no real increase in ongoing expenses. As far as the used Corolla? I mean, one or two owner 14-year-old cars exist, but they're rare - especially low end cars. Corollas are solid choices, but the main factor in anything that old is how well the previous owners have taken care of it. Verman posted:I'm curious to get some peoples opinions and let me know if this is the place or not. My wife and I have been debating a second car for convenience. We've got an 08 4runner with 200k miles and I take it to the mountains all the time. We both work from home 90% of the time but I go in occasionally. No kids yet but we have a dog and live in Seattle. The second car would come in handy when I'm up skiing or backpacking for a week and my wife has a set of wheels to get around. If we have a kid, the second car is basically mandatory. This is probably my pre-pandemic brain talking but $6k seems a bit high for a 15 year old Prius, even with that low of mileage. It's probably more fair than I want to admit. The main "common" failure point on an older Prius is the HV battery which as you mentioned has multiple affordable fixes now. You can actually get rebuilt batteries for a good bit less than that, or if you really want to you can dig into the pack and find the bad modules and just swap those. The other one is the power brake booster / master cylinder, which costs about the same. Consider that taxi companies routinely ran second-gen Priuses well past a quarter million miles before finally selling them - as long as the car isn't rusting apart it will be a very, very long time before it's economically infeasible to repair.
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# ? Oct 12, 2021 00:18 |
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IOwnCalculus posted:The Spark is GM's attempt to build the cheapest viable car possible and it shows. GM can build good vehicles but that's reserved for their products where the beancounters don't make every single decision. ah okay, that makes sense. quote:As far as the used Corolla? I mean, one or two owner 14-year-old cars exist, but they're rare - especially low end cars. Corollas are solid choices, but the main factor in anything that old is how well the previous owners have taken care of it. i plan on taking it to a mechanic (if they let me) before i buy, and if they give the thumbs up, then it would be an okay purchase? edit: also i should mention that in the 8 years we had our sentra, we drove it a grand total of 45k miles
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# ? Oct 12, 2021 01:34 |
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Mr Interweb posted:i plan on taking it to a mechanic (if they let me) Anyone trying to sell you a car that won't allow you to take it to a mechanic (or arrange to get it to one of your choice) for a pre purchase inspection is 100% someone you should never, ever buy a car from.
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# ? Oct 12, 2021 01:37 |
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So this happened yesterday: My truck, which I purchased new in July, got hit by a box truck while parked. My husband had driven it to his work because his car was in for tire rotation/servicing and ended up in a very unlucky parking spot in the lot near the intersection with a steep maintenance driveway, so when a contractor box truck was backing up out of this driveway, the back corner of the box truck bumped into the taillight and pushed my truck about 18" to the side before the driver saw/felt it. This all happened in very slow motion so it seems that the damage is all superficial - didn't see any obvious signs of internal/frame damage, the taillight still works, and it drove normally on the way home (no highways or high speed). Even so, ethanol's Tacoma horror story was pretty much the first thing that ran through my head when my husband told me so I'm going to have it looked at very closely. I guess one bright side is that we're dealing with a professional entity with proper coverage that has accepted full responsibility rather than some underinsured rando or a hit and run. Still sucks a lot because it's a lovely inconvenience that I really don't need right now and also why did it have to be my new truck?
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# ? Oct 14, 2021 18:25 |
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Make sure to find an expensive body shop to make up for it. Edit: Those boxes are AL, so you actually do need to go to a shop that works with aluminum as it is different than steel to fix (and less fixable). Figure out where the audi dealer sends the A8s.
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# ? Oct 14, 2021 20:38 |
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Same place the Jag dealer sends the XJs the junkyard.
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# ? Oct 14, 2021 20:49 |
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IOwnCalculus posted:The Spark is GM's attempt to build the cheapest viable car possible and it shows. GM can build good vehicles but that's reserved for their products where the beancounters don't make every single decision. FWIIW, I just drove 2k km over 10 days in a Toyota Aygo and it was perfectly fine. Yes there are obvious cost cutting measures like just 1 wiper and only 2 HVAC vents and hard plastics but it fit 2 people fine, was quiet at reasonable speeds and we got like 50mpg so IMO it's not a bad option unless you can get a Corolla for a few k more or something.
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# ? Oct 16, 2021 11:01 |
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Sure, but I trust Toyota to come up with a better value engineered car than GM. We also don't even get that car (or even that entire class of cars, really) in the US. There's a lot of other pressures in Europe that make a bigger price/ownership delta between small classes of cars that don't really exist here. So when you're at the small end of the market, you're up against the price limits of things like "it costs $x to build a chassis, no matter how small it is".
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# ? Oct 16, 2021 15:21 |
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What if you stamp it out of a single sheet of steel and bend it into a chassis
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# ? Oct 16, 2021 15:41 |
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Only good subcompact is the mazda2. A fiesta except they took all the soundproofing out and added lightness (and a good transmission). The fit is also good too because they actually tried to build a good car.
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# ? Oct 16, 2021 21:20 |
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nm posted:Only good subcompact is the mazda2. A fiesta except they took all the soundproofing out and added lightness (and a good transmission). honda fit, surely
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# ? Oct 18, 2021 03:11 |
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Yaris GR-4 Just saw one live yesterday. Wondering now if the local dealer has any for display..
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# ? Oct 18, 2021 13:48 |
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Why hasn't Chrysler come out with the 2022 Pacifica Hybrid models yet? Gah.
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# ? Oct 18, 2021 16:56 |
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nm posted:Make sure to find an expensive body shop to make up for it. Dropped off truck at shop this morning. We found a highly reviewed body shop nearby - owner/head mechanic is a mechanical engineer and seems to really know his poo poo and has a completely separate setup for aluminum work. He'll send the official estimate later today, but it's already shaping up to be a pretty expensive repair (for the other party to pay for) - a new tail light is like $1k just for the part due to the radar tech in it. And he estimated that it's going to take about two weeks - a couple days to perform the actual repairs and the rest of the time waiting for parts due to supply chain issues. Good thing I work from home and don't have any immediate plans to haul stuff.
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# ? Oct 18, 2021 17:56 |
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This is probably a very dumb question but here it goes. My wife and I purchased a used car last month and recently got our new plates in the mail. It's a 2020 Kia Rio, if that matters. As far as I can tell, the old plates are held in by two Philips-head screws. I'm traveling for work for the next month or so, and while my wife isn't the handiest person for repairs, she can use a screwdriver. The way she tells it, the screws will not budge. We've never had to replace plates before so I figured I'd ask here before sending her over to a mechanic. Is it just a matter of applying more force/torque to the screw or would plates be held by any sort of special system that might require a more technical approach?
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# ? Oct 18, 2021 19:28 |
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Ur Getting Fatter posted:This is probably a very dumb question but here it goes. It just takes more twisting force. There's nothing other than the screws.
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# ? Oct 18, 2021 19:29 |
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See if the screws have a hex head on them, mine have often been 8 or 10mm and using a socket will give her more leverage on turning them.
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# ? Oct 18, 2021 19:34 |
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Try some WD-40.
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# ? Oct 18, 2021 19:48 |
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skipdogg posted:See if the screws have a hex head on them, mine have often been 8 or 10mm and using a socket will give her more leverage on turning them. I'm fairly sure they were just regular round Philips-head but I'll have my wife send me a picture when she gets back home, thanks. Throatwarbler posted:Try some WD-40. Good idea, thanks.
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# ? Oct 18, 2021 20:00 |
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:honda fit, surely You mean the one I mentioned in the second line?
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# ? Oct 18, 2021 20:22 |
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nm posted:You mean the one I mentioned in the second line? lol yes
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# ? Oct 18, 2021 22:06 |
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So this isn't a standard "What car should I get?" but rather I just need some advice. My wife and I were carjacked and we need to replace our 2013 Edge as soon as possible because we live out in the country and there is no public transportation. There is a used 2018 Edge nearby with 61000 miles for $29,000. It's a Titanium trim with some minor damage (crack in taillight). For $27,000 we could just get a new 2021 Escape S. I'm hesitant to because I was just very comfortable with the Edge and the Escape feels cheap. But the temptation of a new car is tempting. Does anyone have anything extremely nice or bad to say about Escapes? We'd be using it for canoe-carrying and driving on gravel but nothing more heavy duty than that. Sorry if I'm breaking any thread rules, I extremely stressed and feel crunched for time.
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# ? Oct 18, 2021 23:59 |
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Get the cheaper one and spend the money you saved on therapy. (this is 100% not snark)
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# ? Oct 19, 2021 00:06 |
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Get a beefier wife.
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# ? Oct 19, 2021 01:54 |
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My mom has an escape. It's a lifted focus with plastic cladding. Literally. I don't know if that is a good or a bad thing.
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# ? Oct 19, 2021 03:11 |
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NinjaPete posted:So this isn't a standard "What car should I get?" but rather I just need some advice. 2018 Edge Titanium MSRP was like $37k. A generic Ford refrigerator-oh-wheels doesn't usually sell for MSRP. How could it still be worth $29k after 60k miles? Maybe that's just what people are willing to pay for cars these days, in which case I would buy a new car.
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# ? Oct 19, 2021 05:04 |
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NinjaPete posted:Does anyone have anything extremely nice or bad to say about Escapes? We'd be using it for canoe-carrying and driving on gravel but nothing more heavy duty than that. When I graduated from college my car plan was to buy a Ford Escape as my first ever vehicle purchase - I liked the fact that it was an SUV but quite compact, had a hybrid option, I liked how it looked, it was affordable, etc. Also my neighbor at the time had owned one and absolutely loved it but traded it in for something bigger when they had their second kid. But then the 2013 model came out and I immediately lost interest. Kept looking at 2012 and earlier used Escapes for a while though. I suppose my thoughts are outdated and useless because the Escape I'm talking about is the old miniature Explorer type and not the current lifted Focus type.
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# ? Oct 19, 2021 07:30 |
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Queen Victorian posted:When I graduated from college my car plan was to buy a Ford Escape as my first ever vehicle purchase - I liked the fact that it was an SUV but quite compact, had a hybrid option, I liked how it looked, it was affordable, etc. Also my neighbor at the time had owned one and absolutely loved it but traded it in for something bigger when they had their second kid. But then the 2013 model came out and I immediately lost interest. Kept looking at 2012 and earlier used Escapes for a while though. I don’t want to break your heart or anything, but that 2nd gen Escape was basically a Mazda 626 sedan with some body panels and a lift The new Escape is on the Ford C2 platform which is shared by the Bronco Sport and Maverick, and of course the Focus. I’m not a fan of the new escape design either though. I had a 2008 and a 2009 or 2010 Escape and they were decent little cars back in the day. Looked good, I never had any problems with them, but I also didn’t keep them long.
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# ? Oct 19, 2021 07:43 |
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if you are considering buying a new escape you should consider going Full and getting the Maverick. Didn't know carjacking was still a thing. That sucks.
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# ? Oct 19, 2021 14:05 |
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Didn't know carjacking was still a thing. That sucks. Very much still a thing in the major metros. My city, Chicago, has the most in the nation per year. 1,413 last year, over 800 so far this year. It's a legit concern when you're in certain areas, and I make sure to hit the lock button after I get in etc. Even happens in the middle of the day. Our police department is totally incompetent and has a near 0% clearance rate (arrests made) for any of this stuff. Our clearance rate for shootings annually is often less than 5%.
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# ? Oct 19, 2021 14:22 |
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I wonder how I would react to a car jacking with push button start. If I got out and ran, key still in my pocket, the truck would immobilize. On the other hand they might then chase me, I dunno
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# ? Oct 19, 2021 16:35 |
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ethanol posted:If I got out and ran, key still in my pocket, the truck would immobilize. Would it? I don't think that's how the system in the LC200 works (only thing I have with keyless). It just angry beeps and gives you an MFD message.
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# ? Oct 19, 2021 16:41 |
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# ? Apr 24, 2024 23:02 |
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I would think it wouldn't just turn off since your key could have died and suddenly turning a car off on the road is dangerous. Many (most?) modern luxury cars have GPS locators through an app though so you'd be able to call the cops and tell them where the car is at least until they can get to a place to disable it. Assuming the cops give a poo poo, that is. I think my BMW lets me mark it as stolen and immobilize the car remotely. Hopefully you didn't leave your phone on the wireless charger.
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# ? Oct 19, 2021 16:46 |