off topic: new car advice for senior

[sms]

Listen to last Saturday's Prairie Home Companion at time 6:29-9:28. "A wall is obviously the only answer." Very funny.

[Tony Hwang]

Harper only worked for himself and his friends. Never for Canada or Canadians. His riding is in Calgary, never did anything for Calgary. When something bad pops up he blames others, for something good it is to his credit. He used term "old stock Canada" He is now half way to ruining that. Look at what what cons. did for Alberta being in power for

40 years. For the better or worse we have to dump them. When we travel overseas, people wonder what Canada is becoming. Our reputation is damaged already.

[Tekkie®]

Uncle Monster posted for all of us...

Did it have the Ricardo Montalban "Rich Cordoba Leather"?

[Tony Hwang]

I am sorry, being a native Korean, I have no desire to drive Hyundai or KIA(Hyundai owns KIA by the way) At start up Hyundai's technical mentor was Mitsubishi. Wife drove Mitsubishi, Eagle Summit once. She collected most speeding ticket driving this little 2.4 L, AWD model, LOL!

[Tony Hwang]

I miss his voice.

[notbob]

Unlikely, as "Cordoba" was the model car and it was upholstered with "rich Corinthian leather".

nb

[clare]

The Koreans out-japped the Japs. They started with a Mitsubishi and made a much better vehicle out of it (athough they made some pretty crappy cars in the process-including the Pony) You'd be hard pressed to GIVE me a Mitsu. My daughter bought an Elantra GT. Nice car. A lot less money than my second daughter's Honda Civic too.

[Tony Hwang]

ssove Mitsubishi, Eagle Summit once. She collected

My wife's niece bought a Santa Fe Limited with full tilt, top of the line. No major problem but little things keep popping up endlessly from day 1. She is single, HS teacher. No one to take care of her car problem(s). Her dad, my BIL is mechanical illiterate. He is known for buying always loser in car purchases. Asks me often questions, then go out buy something I did not recommend. Chevy Lumina Van, Dodge Royal with electrical problem no one could fix, etc. Now his wife, my wife's sister has to go out with me to buy their car they are now driving. Nissan Rogue 2WD. I'd like the car better with V6 or turbo engine. Reliable car. So far no trouble other than routine maintenance. Another funny thing with my BIL is he is AFRAID of towing anything. When I was pulling 30ft fiver, came out with us for camping sleeping in tent. Cousins were sleeping in the trailer. He wouldn't even buy a tent trailer which he could use rear view mirror. When I let him try class C motor home, he literally freaked out. No rear view mirror but side view ones only, LOL! He was KiWi in the air force. Damn good HVAC engineer. Very nice guy but he can't even replace a wall switch when it goes bad. Afraid of height. Without knowing it first time, I ask his help with my antenna tower. He absolutely refused to go on the roof of the house.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Why are you sorry?

I used to laugh at people buying the original Hyundai Excels. the little boxes that the paint wore off of. Then they changed. I bought a US built Sonata Limited in 2007, 2010, 2013. I liked each one more than the last. Just bought a Korea built 2015 Genesis. Amazing car with all the options. Amazing quality too. Total of 220,000 miles and only one warranty repair. Far better record than GM cars I've owned.

[rbowman]

Is it an interference engine?

[rbowman]

On our honeymoon in Quebec City I rented a first generation Dodge Colt, which was a rebadged Mitsubichi, figuring a compact would be a little better for navigating the city than the Continental. I'd driven up in the Conti, cruising at 100 mph while my bride snoozed. With the Colt, every time I got up past 25 she started having a panic attack.

In that thing a jaunt up to Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupre was a real adventure.

[clare]

When I came home from Africa in 1975 I bought a 1972 Colt 1600. I could not drive that car 15 miles without my legs going to sleep - the seats were that terrible. My brother had a 1973 Cricket - the one year they were re-badged Colts, not sunbeams - and his seats were fine. Both cracked heads and had other problems that were deal-killers. Never touched another one.

The 1972 Renault, and my '67 Peugeot 204 were both better cars (definitely better rides) .

[Tony Hwang]

I kinda obliged to try at least one Korean brand but old memory is too strong to forget. I know Sonata is very nice car. It is up there in it's class. Friend in L/A had a Genesis. Ended up going back to Lexus. His wife drives Acura TL.

[rbowman]

My brother had a Peugeot that he really liked that would have been about the same vintage. He put a lot of high speed miles on it driving out to his job in the desert.

He had been a Marine in the South Pacific and it wasn't until some time in the '90s that he would buy a Japanese car, a Tercel to tow behind the motor home. After that he bought a couple of the larger Toyota sedans. Camrys? I never could keep the models straight even though I drive a Yaris.

[rbowman]

I think they've improved. Years ago I looked at a Chevy Aveo, which was a Daewoo. It was pretty sad; slow, noisy, and very poor fuel economy considering its underpowered engine.

[Tony Hwang]

Daewoo produced GM cars were all flop. None of them lasted.

[Don Y]

IMO, safety and "reliability" are, by far, the most important issues in making a car purchase. You don't want to die (unnecessarily) in it. And, you want it to *start* every time you ask it to!

I've watched people take the "penny wise, pound foolish" approach to purchases over the years and the consequences of those short-sighted decisions.

[I recall colleagues who bought "off brand (PC) clones" in the mid 80's hoping to save a few bucks. And, the countless hours they lost when things didn't quite work as they had hoped (hence the rice of the "100% compatible" notion).]

[Robert Green]

I was a consultant back then and I built a 6 PC dBaseII data system that had paralegals entering data abstracts on 4 machines nearly around the clock on XT clones. Periodically I would sneaker net the abstracted data onto two AT clones daily for searching. Couldn't have done it without the price break the clones provided and didn't have any trouble running dBaseII and Wordstar on those machines.

I had considerable help from VF associates and owner Tom Von Flandern and his sons. (DC area computer geeks of the time probably know the name.) They lived, breathed and ate clones and stocked what they thought were the most reliable equipment. I spent 10's of thousands of dollars there. The only dud I bought was a Tulin 40MB drive that crapped out very shortly after purchase. Then, the company managed to go bankrupt while "servicing" my dead drive.

I also managed to get a stack of new PC Jr half height 360K drives with an IBM logo on the front to install in the machines I used in the abstracting project. Since the only logo visible was "IBM" no one in a multi-hundred employee law firm knew that they were clones.

I'll agree that the more esoteric the application, the more likely compatibility problems would arise but I rarely saw them. I had legit IBMs on site, but clones could be had for considerably less than the real thing. After a while, I *preferred* clones because I could select what motherboard I wanted from a selection of suppliers that also made boards for the Big Boys. I ended up mostly with Asus motherboards in my machines because they seemed the most reliable but I've used Tyan, Gigabyte, MSI and many more.

I am not sure that the PC revolution would have been as remarkable as it was without the clones. They enabled a lot more people access to personal computing than an IBM-only world would have.

[Don Y]

Those are relatively "mainstream" applications. You weren't drawing schematics, designing circuit boards, or creating molds for injection molded parts.

I didn't run "IBM-badged" hardware. OTOH, I didn't run "Peoples' Computer Factory #2733" UNBADGED machines. When my friends were paying ~2K for a machine, I was paying 8K. But, I never called anyone at 3AM complaining that a $3K CAD program "was misbehaving". Or, that my "discount" disk drive's geometry wasn't supported in the machine's BIOS, etc. Or, my (UN*X) coprocessor card was incompatible with the DOS driver it loaded "under" the UN*X OS for "hardware services".

[rbowman]

I never owned a genuine IBM PC and didn't have compatibility problems. Some were hotter than PCs, in more ways than one.

I'm always amused when people I consider to be toward the left end of the political spectrum favor Apple products. I guess they like the 'my way or the highway' approach Apple has always used.