Quote Originally Posted by Tig
I have neighbors who get new cars constantly. Not sports cars, classics or anything cool like that, but SUV's and trucks. (remember, I'm in Texas)

My '99 V-6 Ford pickup has 168,000 miles and still runs very well, so I see no reason to get into debt for a few more years. I bought my wife a Honda Civic last year to replace her dieing '97 Taurus. For the money, it is an outstanding little car.

However, if I won a lottery, I'd be sure to find a sweet Hemi 'Cuda, maybe a bad resto-mod '69 Camero, or resto-mod Corvette. Just something special to enjoy now and then.
I know, my neighbour changes his mercedeces twice a year. He now drives one of those AMG 6.8 V8 4x4's and some huge 500 series sedan plus a 300 series STW for the wife. But he's had like 5 500 series convertibles in as many years...I dunno, he probably leases them because he never drives the same car for much longer than 6 months.

What is it with 60's cars I do not know but I LOVE 'em...if I won the lottery I'd get me a Charger, Cuda, Roadrunner, 442, GTO...preferably one of those BIG 60's muscle machines....preferably something in 'sleeper' variety though, something that doesn't _look_ fast outside but can eat a strip in 11 seconds or so and wake up the whole town. 50's cars are not as appealing to me. My friend has a '68 Camaro fitted with a beefed-up 440 engine and three on the floor...the torque is just incredible...it's just such a rush to kick it to 2 and kick the pedal to the metal...like a damned spaceship launch and you could swear the whole car body twists along its length quite noticeably due to sheer engine torque.

I always hated small cars, I'd never drive a japanese sport or a small british one (sorry sumi :-) not that I think they're bad cars, I just prefer it big and really noisy with big rumbling engines. I hate turbo whistles etc. toy cars...it's gotta weigh a ton and have a proper V8 if it's a hobby car :-)

But for daily driver...as big an old STW I can get with a small economical engine, A/C a must and no rust, please. ~200k on the clock usually means all wear-out parts have been taken care of once already and they tend to give me 4-5 years carefree driving.

I'll never buy a car with like 160k on the clock...either well under 120k or then past 200k...between 150 and 200 all cars go thru major repairs. I've had like four cars that age and boy they needed a LOT of parts. But every car I bought past 200k has been pretty much fault-free...everything already fixed once they last forever :-)