Of cars I’ve actually used, I’d probably go with the early 2000s Mercedes wagon I owned pre-covid. It had plenty of get up and go, but the suspension leaked, and some windows didn’t work, and it was rusted a little bit on basically every body panel. When I got into an accident that was someone else’s fault, I looked at the modest damage and said “eh, it’s not really any worse off” and we parted ways.
A Benz?
Here’s what I don’t understand: I would almost bet you could have had all that fixed for $45-50,000.00 … yet … you parted with that cool, righteous, and loyal automobile??
Fun fact, after selling my cool, righteous, and loyal automobile, the new owner took 3 weeks to crash it and have it impounded by the cops because he never got it registered, or insured, and drove it with stolen/borrowed plates.
I know this because the cops thought it was still my car.
Here’s my story of the best beater I ever had (or at least the most cost effective). It was a 1983 Datsun Nissan Sentra Diesel. Yes, it had all those names strung out on the decklid. When I got it the top end of the engine came in a big box because the timing belt had broken. I paid $350 for the car and for about another $350 in parts and machine shop work, I got it running. The Sentra became my road trip car because of its 50 mpg and diesel fuel costing less than gasoline back then.
Dings? A neighbor backed into the front left fender and turn signal. A kid on a bicycle whom I hit left a butt print in the hood (totally his fault!) and my kid backed her car into the passenger side front fender and door. I had it for 8 years and 8 months when it got accordioned between two big Chevy pickups. I’d put over 80k miles on it and the other guy’s insurance paid me $1100 for it.
Supposedly derived from the monster rims (i.e.: “hoops”) on such beasts.
ETA: verification of this appears to be impossible. I tried Google but it keeps wanting send me stuff related to basketball.
Sounds like you forgot to file your state’s “I sold this car” form before the car has driven out of sight. That’s always a good thing to do ASAP; not so good to forget.
You coulda had a SWAT team in your parlor if that guy was bad enough.
I just have my 2000 Chevrolet Suburban. When I got it in 2017 it was an almost 20 year old beater with 190,000 some miles on it. Second transmission[1], but in great shape mechanically, and the inside also in excellent condition, other than the driver’s seat.
GMT800 platform, so millions sold with easy and cheap parts availability, and the 5.3 Vortec LM7 engine which is reliable and easy to work on. It’s right in the middle of the 10 year or so period between when OBDII came along, so easy to diagnose problems with a scanner, but before unreliable things like cylinder deactivation decreased reliability.
It was a beater. When my Dad gave it to me it was worth about $2500. For all the reasons in the previous paragraph it is now worth 3 or 4 times that.
because my Dad never learned to come to a full stop between reverse and drive ↩︎
It may have later become synonymous with those wheels/rims, but it predates those by quite a lot – at least back to the 1960s, and probably well before that.
There are references in the OED going back to 1919, but it’s possible that there were more than one origin that are valid.
I was going to question that cite too.
Those big wheels aren’t on beaters. They’re on admittedly older cars that folks, usually urban black folks, lavish a lot of care and attention on. And as much money as they can muster.
I have never seen a set of those wheels on a ragged smoking piece of shit that needs a paint job with the headliner hanging down.
I’m not sure where Cheesteak is at, but Texas didn’t have that kind of form until 2023. Before that, they advised you to visit the tax office with the buyer to transfer the title. Of course, no one did that. My friend and my dad both got notices from cities they had never been to for parking violations on cars they had both sold years ago.
So, good advice now, but not so useful back in the day.
Agree that way back when those forms were only in a few states.
I recall when CA added that form to their mix. I was in college and actively buying and selling cars as a side gig. The form was a great invention. That was around 1978 IIRC.
It somehow figures it’d take Texas another 45 years to adopt the same good idea.
I too wonder where @Cheesesteak is. But he sold his car sometime between 2000 and 2019. Probably closer to the latter. So not so much Ye Olden Dayes of Yore as all that. At least in forward-thinking states.
Agree with you both, but … what with bureaucracies being bureaucracies and all, the car met its demise within 3wks of the transfer – maybe/maybe not enough time for the Release of Liabiilty to be in the system.
Heh, or states that enforce or have laws. We don’t even have safety inspections now. I regularly drive a car that last had a valid license and inspection in 2020! We’re basically a big offshoot of Oklahoma without medicinal marijuana at the moment.
We have a Saturn SC2- still runs great.
But maybe my old 61 Chevy Impala.
I was stationed in OK for a year w USAF. A local’s joke:
Q: Why is it so windy in Oklahoma?
A: Because Texas sucks.
They’re not entirely wrong.
Although as to safety inspections, Google AI informs me that only 10 states mandate them annually, and of those 10, only NY and PA are of material size / population. There are two more small states that mandate them every 2 years. The other ~75% of US states = WAG 85% of the population, have no mandated safety inspections whatsoever.
So Texas is in good, or at least plentiful, company in that department.
I’m in New Jersey, and I don’t think we have an “I sold this car” form even today. I did surrender the plates right away, and had that receipt. Here, the plates cannot be transferred to a new owner. When you sell, you take the plates and sign over the title, then it’s the buyer’s problem to get it re-registered, etc.
On the plus side, tickets use the plate, not the VIN, so I’ll never get a ticket for a car I once owned. Downside is that private purchases are annoying as hell to manage because you bought a car with no plate.
I rear ended one of those suckers when the lady driving it came to a complete stop in the left lane of a 4 lane highway. It didn’t have a scratch, but it totaled my car.
Here in Illinois, no statewide vehicle inspections. For cars owned in the Chicago and St. Louis metro areas, there is emissions testing, but that’s it.
I just checked and you’re right. There’s no such form now. NJ MVC | Transferring Vehicle Ownership.
FL where I live and most, not all, other states use the same plate rules as NJ. Namely, the seller retains the plates for their replacement car or surrenders them to the government if there is no replacement car. We explored that topic in detail nn some other thread in the last year or so.
Which procedures are presumably a sneaky government plan to incentivize the buyer to re-register the car in their name before the cops notice the lack of a plate.
Oddly, FL has the “I sold my car” form too. Belt and suspenders.