What do you drive…

[SignOfZeta]

you might wanna black out that licence plate in your favorite image editor.

just sayin'.

Why do people do that, anyway? People see my license plate every day when I drive down the street. Why is it OK for them to see it and not random people on the Internet?

When you find out the answer to this question please tell me.

more crazy stalkers on the internet.

I don't get it...what are crazy internet stalkers going to do with a number that crazy real life stalkers aren't going to do with it? I mean, my car is sitting out in front my place right now with the plate in full view. Am I...in danger!?

[SignOfZeta]

Awesome.

In 1995 I bought a '76 Lancia Scorpion for $1 from my neighbor.

Yeah, its not my favorite Lancia, but its nice as hell. And hey, according to this, also quicker than a Delorean.

My favorite Lanica:

[nectarsis]

No offense, but a painted Delorean is an abomination, and a sin against the car.  Defeats the whole purpose of the cars design.

If all you have to do to make a car pointless is to paint it, its not a very great car, IMO.

I've never really been a huge fan of this car. The time traveling one is OK, of course, but the basic model just always seemed like it was desperate middle aged 80s douchebags obsessed with the superficial. The car looks like a Lotus or a Ferrari or something, it looks *great*. I'm a big a Giorgetto Giugiaro fan. His stuff is fantastic....but this car has one big problem; it isn't anywhere near as fast as it looks. In fact, it isn't anywhere near as fast as a Golf GTI from the same year (to name another al Giorgetto Giugiaro design that cost 1/3 as much), and that's pretty sad. Its really just a total turd, performace-wise.

The good thing about them is that they are pretty cheap. You can get them for less than $20k easy, and I suppose that for $10k more or so you could put a decent powertrain in it.

I didn't mean that it made the whole car pointless, but it defeats the major point of having a stainless steel body.  Using paint to cover damage is a cheap fix, and hopefully anyone who has one wouldn't take such a cheap fix.

[Necromancer]

I didn't mean that it made the whole car pointless, but it defeats the major point of having a stainless steel body.  Using paint to cover damage is a cheap fix, and hopefully anyone who has one wouldn't take such a cheap fix.

But what was the point of a stainless steel body anyway?  The additional weight that paint adds to a vehicle is negligible, so the only real advantage is corrosion resistance, which is unaffected by painting.  Depending on the severity of the damage, it would be impossible to perfectly straighten a panel back to its original shape while maintaining the grain direction; and even if one could source a new stamping, it might not fully match due to slight variations in alloys.  If an owner wants a flawless finish on their DMC-12, painting may be the only recourse, unless of course they want to have it gold plated. 

[nectarsis]

mmmm gold plated 

[ceti alpha]

The De Lorean that's around here isn't perfect that's for sure. It looks great, but there must have been damage done to it because the stainless steel doesn't match in parts. The black paint really does look great I think.

[termis]

Who-hoo! Sold my truck today.  Now I'm wheel-less (of the 4-wheel variety, anyway)!  Oh wait, that's not so good... 

My next car's going to be a right-hand drive car.  Hmmm....  the choices...

If an owner wants a flawless finish on their DMC-12, painting may be the only recourse, unless of course they want to have it gold plated. 

I guess you're referring to the one in Reno?

The Delorean certainly is total crap performance-wise, but the thing certainly has character. 

[Mobius]

Acura RSX... Fun but practical.  I'm thankful for its 35+ MPG mileage these days.  Shame they stopped making them.  Here's mine.

I also saw a DeLorean driving around here a couple weeks ago.  I want one so bad.

[ceti alpha]

Who-hoo! Sold my truck today.  Now I'm wheel-less (of the 4-wheel variety, anyway)!  Oh wait, that's not so good... 

My next car's going to be a right-hand drive car.  Hmmm....  the choices...

Oh dear. I couldn't imagine driving standard with my left hand. It would certainly take some getting used to, that's for sure.

[Necromancer]

My next car's going to be a right-hand drive car.  Hmmm....  the choices...

If you're in the US, I think you're limited to a Wrangler or a used Subaru for factory RHD.  If money's no object, then you can import just about anything in RHD; I suggest a Skyline. 

I guess you're referring to the one in Reno?

The Delorean certainly is total crap performance-wise, but the thing certainly has character. 

Indeed on all counts, though there's two other gold plated DMC-12s.

[termis]

My next car's going to be a right-hand drive car.  Hmmm....  the choices...

If you're in the US, I think you're limited to a Wrangler or a used Subaru for factory RHD.  If money's no object, then you can import just about anything in RHD; I suggest a Skyline. 

I'll be jumping ships to Australia, so I'm sure there'll be plenty of RHD cars to choose from.

I'm pretty sure I've seen a rhd wrangler once in my life somewhere in the US, but I can't ever seeing non-antique, non-postal unit rhd cars in the US.  On the other hand, I've seen quite a few random rhd cars in Canada that came in through a gray-market imports.  Just from memory, I've seen an MR2, Civics coupe, & a CRX or two.  I believe the import laws in respect to cars in Canada are a bit looser than the one in the US, as almost any cars that are 15+ years can be imported here relatively hassle free.  I think a few folks in Toronto were going after the R32 Skylines after the 15 year-limit was reached on those models.

I'm going by fuzzy memory, but I believe that time length is almost double that time in the US, making it 30 years, or else the car has to go through some super-expensive conversion which is prohibitive (as the gov't says you'll need imperial gauges, the whole thing has to be converted to LHD, put in proper emission controls, etc).  I once imported an antique bike into California, as since it was an "antique" that was older than 30 years, so it didn't have to go through all that conversion junk, but even though, it was still a pretty big hassle -- it took months until everything was sorted out.

Oh dear. I couldn't imagine driving standard with my left hand. It would certainly take some getting used to, that's for sure.

Yeah, I thought the same way too (in video game analogy, it'd be like using a controller with the buttons and the control pad reversed), but you actually adjust to it surprisingly quickly. 

[SignOfZeta]

Somewhat recently the US government has made it much easier to import a single car into the country. You have to prove that it has some sort of technical or historical significance though. So if you wanted to import that Delta S4 up there, its not that hard to do. If you just want to import 100 units of some cheap piece of brand new shit (like a Cherry or a G-Wiz,) they'd tell you to piss off. There is a guy in NJ that imported a Golf Rally a few years ago, and he's not the only one.

Basically the EPA/NHSTA/whatever must have figured out that this country's problems weren't caused by the swarms of 959s and Ford Falcons from overseas. More likely though is that some senator collects cars and pushed this thing through when nobody was looking.

This just covers you for the Federal government. If you want to, say, get a state inspection sticker for North Carolina (needed to get a plate) you are going to have a hard time whereas here in Michigan you can register a car you build from scratch with no catalysts, crash bars, seatbelts, doors, etc. Just give them a clear VIN for a '72 Beetle and they'll fall for it. Nobody in the government here will even look at the car except for a cop, and that's only if he decides to pull you over for some reason.

Still this is an improvement since before the EPA would actually force you to destroy an illegitimate import. I recall an issue with a popular American car magazne (probably either Road and Track or Car and Driver, can't recall) where they were forced to destroy a Trabant they imported. They held a contest to see how it should be done away with.

[Necromancer]

I'll be jumping ships to Australia, so I'm sure there'll be plenty of RHD cars to choose from.

Indeed; if Ford decides to pull a GM and start importing rides from down under, the Falcon XR6 Turbo with a manual tranny would certainly get a look (were I in the market for a sedan anyway).

[nat]

That still blows my mind that some states actually require you to bring your vehicle in to be "inspected." That's just so..... foreign to me.

In the Seattle counties and surrounding area we are required to have a hydrocarbon test every 2 years for cars less than 25 years old, but that's it. Cars older than 25 years are exempt from this. There are no other "inspections" and they don't even pop the hood-- just stick something that looks like a giant thermometer in the tailpipe for a few seconds.

I've heard some states require you to pass "safety" inspections where they actually inspect all parts of your car on some kind of regular basis. Sounds like a real pain, and I bet they make the driver's pay for it, too. "Great news! We've found a spot of rust on the undercarriage and therefor determined your car is not roadworthy. Please take a bus home. Oh, by the way, that will be $200." I just can't imagine.

Here in WA, like Zeta mentioned, you could register a piece of sheetmetal with an engine attached and nobody would give a shit (my dad did this numerous times back in the '70s and '80s, he used to build prototype vehicles, usually out of fiberglass, for gas mileage tests) as long as you had a VIN to fill in the DMV form.

[ceti alpha]

That still blows my mind that some states actually require you to bring your vehicle in to be "inspected." That's just so..... foreign to me.

In the Seattle counties and surrounding area we are required to have a hydrocarbon test every 2 years for cars less than 25 years old, but that's it. Cars older than 25 years are exempt from this. There are no other "inspections" and they don't even pop the hood-- just stick something that looks like a giant thermometer in the tailpipe for a few seconds.

I've heard some states require you to pass "safety" inspections where they actually inspect all parts of your car on some kind of regular basis. Sounds like a real pain, and I bet they make the driver's pay for it, too. "Great news! We've found a spot of rust on the undercarriage and therefor determined your car is not roadworthy. Please take a bus home. Oh, by the way, that will be $200." I just can't imagine.

Here in WA, like Zeta mentioned, you could register a piece of sheetmetal with an engine attached and nobody would give a shit (my dad this numerous times back in the '70s and '80s, he used to build prototype vehicles, usually out of fiberglass, for gas mileage tests) as long as you had a VIN to fill in the DMV form.

Yup. All provinces in Canada require a yearly inspection. Quebec was a haven for a while, but even they now require yearly inspections. Here in Nova Scotia, inspections were pretty slack. Unless you had something seriously wrong with your car (i.e. a broken emergency brake) you would get a pass. The garage I went to for inspections would just put my car up on the lift, give it a quick look over and then send me on my way for $15.

That all changed last year. Inspections are super tight now. Your car has to be pretty much perfect now to pass inspection. As I said, for the 3 years I had my car I only spent $45 in total for inspections. Then take last year when the laws changed, my inspection cost me $900.  As sucky as it was to get hit with a bill like that, it's safe to say that if my car was getting properly inspected every year my bill wouldn't have been nearly as high.

I also like to know that my car isn't going to shit the bed on me out of nowhere. A friend of mine also took his car to get inspected at the same place and his brake lines ended up snapping going down one of the steepest hills in the city. I don't expect when my inspection is due in October that I will be spending even a quarter of what I spent last year. That being said, I don't mind spending money on my car because if one thing is wrong with your car, that will effect something else, and so on and so on.