Quote:
Originally Posted by David R. Smith
There is an old joke about English cars:
If you want o know what it's like to drive a "insert model here", go for a drive at night in the rain with the headights and winshield wipers turned off on your current car. Don't forget to roll all the windows down too.  Then, everytime you come up to a stop sign or red light, throw a $20.00 bill out the window, and that's what a English car is like to own.
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One of my oldest friends went and bought a gorgeous 1989
Rolls Royce Silver Spur about a year ago. He'd gone to some considerable expense to have a garage constructed for it to be parked in.
He got a smokin' deal, on it, just under $17,000, for a car with a Blue Book value of $31,000.
However, it was purchased at a lien sale, the wealthy prior owner had simply walked away in disgust and abandoned it at the repair shop because he got sick of the high and never-ending cost of repairs.
On the way back across the San Francisco-Oakland Bay bridge after the PPI had been performed, a hubcap fell off of it and got immediately squashed
by a passing car.
He insisted it be replaced before he bought the car. They looked it up, and the cost of the new Rolls Royce hubcap was $1,000.00 from the parts department. However he felt sorry for the guy and found some for $500 on ebay.
After he bought it, and parked it in the new garage he had built for it, he found out it still needed a lot of attention.
He told me that in the year since he'd had it, he spent another $14,000 on it.
His new wife told me later, privately, that the sum was $15,000.
It still needs more work, at this point, in addition to all that was put into it.
Maybe not such a smokin' deal anymore.....
All of that said, though, we had a a glorious ride to lunch in the thing. A lovely, huge, baroque barge wafting along down the road, with a prow the size of the QE2 ahead of you to see, and the gold plated "Flying lady" hood ornament in view ahead to point the way
"Damn the Datsuns, full speed ahead, Captain!!!"
He let me drive it on the way back home, and oh my paws and whiskers, what a car, did it attract the attention of passersby!!!
I've been trying to get him to go for a vanity license plate, or "cherished number plate" as they say in old Blighty.
My suggestions have included
"PARVENU"
"NOBODY"
"U WISH"
what about "OMG WTF"
He's still thinking about it.
