Quote:
Originally Posted by Skid Row Joe
As a college student I was hitchhiking around Europe. In Germany a fellow with a diesel Mercedes Benz gave me a ride on the autobahn at 200 k per hour. I loved the car and decided that I would own one someday. But from 1988 to 2008, I drove a 1981 Buick that was a hand me down from my uncle. Still ran well but was becoming impossible to find parts. . . .
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Do you admire this behavior? To me, it's fairly disingenuous. A man who prides himself on his keen investment acumen fails to properly protect his most valuable investment - himself.
In 2008, the average three-year-old car on the road contained a raft of safety improvements that would make even the largest 1981 Buick seem a veritable death trap in comparison. Front and side-impact airbags, ABS, electronic stability control and halogen and HID headlights were nowhere to be found on the LeSabre or Electra 225 option list for 1981.
I recall a few years ago when a prominent businessman in my area was killed in a relatively low-speed accident in his early-Eighties Fleetwood Brougham. It was a one-vehicle head-on collision in which he suffered head injuries that probably would have been mitigated by an airbag - if his car had been equipped with one. No doubt his beneficiaries received an incrementally higher distribution of the estate proceeds due to his ill-conceived frugality. He found out the hard way that you can't take it with you.