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Author Topic: Buying a new truck Frank Cox Film God Posts: 2234 From: Melville Saskatchewan Canada Registered: Apr 2011 posted 02-07-2013 06:18 PM                        Since my old Ranger has now arrived at its 21st year, I decided that it's time to retire that and buy a new truck. Boy, was I in for an eye-opener -- trucks and related technology have sure advanced since the last time I looked at them. After checking with the local Ford dealership and the GM dealership, I decided to get a 2013 Ford Escape SUV with 4 wheel drive. It sure has a lot of gadgets, it even parks itself! (I never knew that vehicles could do that. Science fiction come to life and all that.) The key never leaves your pocket -- the door unlocks when you touch the handle, then you press the starter button and drive off. At least I won't have to worry about locking the key in the truck any more. My intention was to pay cash for this truck (Here's my money, where's my truck?) but oddly enough I could get $3500 off of the price if I financed it over 7 years of monthly payments, made three monthly payments on it and then paid off the loan in full on the 91st day, which I can do with no penalty. Strange, but I'll take it since my money can sit in the bank for 3 extra months this way too. It won't add up to all of $3500 saving because they charge $100 or so to register the loan and then I end up paying 3 months of interest on the purchase price, but still: any saving is a saving. I guess they hope that after you sign up for payments you'll just keep on making payments.  |  IP: Logged Monte L Fullmer Film God Posts: 8367 From: Nampa, Idaho, USA Registered: Nov 2004 posted 02-20-2013 11:36 PM                     Give it a few years and all of them gadgets are going to break and that is costly to replace...esp from FORD. That's the sign that they want you to trade the vehicle off and grab a new one since fussing with gadget repair isn't what they want you to do. Keeping you in payments is how banks are making money with long term loans, not losing money on short term, or early pay-off loans.  |  IP: Logged Manny Knowles "What are these things and WHY are they BLUE???" Posts: 4247 From: Bloomington, IN, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 02-21-2013 10:29 AM                     I'd say do it, with the following conditions: 1. There is no penalty for paying-off the loan early. 2. You can trust yourself to pay-off the loan and not settle into making those payments for the full term. The lender is betting that you'll spend the money and/or get comfortable with making the payments. And, yeah... We're gonna need a photo of this truck...  |  IP: Logged Randy Stankey Film God Posts: 6539 From: Erie, Pennsylvania Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-21-2013 11:12 AM                     Cars are too expensive. No, not just because they charge too much for the product but because they put too much expensive crap on them you don't need. I don't need, nor do I want DVD players, video games, navigation systems, heated seats or automated butt wipers. I don't want any electronic device getting between me and operating the car. I don't care for anti-lock brakes. I certainly don't want a bomb embedded in my steering wheel! I don't give a flying fuck what supposed safety statistic any shit-for-brains asshole tries to cite as a reason why I need that shit in my car. I don't want a bunch of shit in my car that I didn't ask for. It's all nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to drive up profit margins by manipulating government regulations and public perception so high-profit extras become required necessities. I want four fucking wheels and a fucking engine. Nothing more. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnyhkBU1yaw  |  IP: Logged Buck Wilson Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 894 From: St. Joseph MO, USA Registered: Sep 2010 posted 02-21-2013 12:31 PM                     Randy, I understand your logic as far as 'extras' but I certainly wouldn't consider seat belts and air bags 'extras'. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joMK1WZjP7g If you say you'd rather be in the '59, I'll dig up the suicide hotline number for ya....  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-21-2013 01:00 PM                        My wife has pretty much the same vehicle as Frank describes (2013 Ford Escape) and while it's pretty fun to drive, the electronics ARE a pain. The clock keeps resetting itself; the satellite radio forgets what station it's on or else it changes the source for no reason. None of this happens with any predictable pattern, just at random. I would guess we don't use about 30% of the features -- partly because many of the touchscreen controls (like HVAC and radio volume) are duplicated with real pushbuttons or knobs on the dashboard. The Bluetooth phone works fine, but when my wife calls me while driving, it sounds like she's standing in a windstorm near the ocean. The voice command thing works pretty well but it fouls up enough of the time that it's easier to just use the actual buttons. We use it mostly to change stations on the radio. Of all the fancy features the one I like the best is not having to screw with the key. You just get in the car and press the button and go. I have to admit I do worry about the long term reliability of all the 42 billion "sensors" the car is equipped with. I drive a 2011 Ford Ranger which is pretty surprising in its simplicity. It is almost identical to the 2002 model I had previously. I don't know what I'll do when this truck wears out, since Ford has now stopped making the Ranger and I have no need for a bigger F150. But, I probably won't have to worry about it for at least 8 or 9 years. (For those already saying "Get a Toyota" or something, I'm a die-hard Ford guy for two reasons: I've always liked their products, and the local Ford dealer is one of our parts store's biggest customers.)  |  IP: Logged Edward Havens Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 614 From: Los Angeles, CA Registered: Mar 2008 posted 02-21-2013 01:16 PM                     Don't know how an SUV is a truck, but I'm with Randy for the most part on this one. I bought a 2005 Corolla brand new. No power locks. No power windows. No satellite or HD radio. No backup camera or GPS or internet-connected dashboard. Just four fucking tires, a fucking engine, four fucking doors, a fucking trunk, a fucking AM/FM/CD player, four fucking seat belts, a fucking glovebox and a couple of fucking cupholders. Everything else is bullshit.  |  IP: Logged James Westbrook Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1133 From: Lubbock, Texas, Usa Registered: Mar 2006 posted 02-21-2013 01:53 PM                     I have a Nissan Versa, which is equipped in a similar fashion to Edward's Corolla, except for the "fucking" trunk. Mine is a hatchback. My main bone of discontention is the tire pressure sensors my car is equipped with. The alert light on my dash comes on when we have a sudden warm-to-cold temp change, or when we get our first rain, and the sensor does not tell me which tire is underinflated. I have ignored it, only to have it go away after I've driven several miles. I guess really busy people need them, lest they forget to look at their tires and notice one of them is flat...  |  IP: Logged Bobby Henderson "Ask me about Trajan." Posts: 10973 From: Lawton, OK, USA Registered: Apr 2001 posted 02-21-2013 02:28 PM                     I don't see the point in so much of the integrated gadgetry. A good smart phone or tablet is way better than any in-dash system from any vehicle maker on the planet. It doesn't matter if it is a tiny econo-box car or a Rolls Royce. The apps on my Android phone are going to do a better job, be updated more often, and not cost anywhere near as much money as some fancy in-dash navigation system. For music, I think it's enough for the car to have a decent radio and CD player. It would be nice to have really good speakers and amps as standard equipment, but one can probably get a better deal and setup after market. In the end, for multimedia purposes I think a vehicle should just have a place in the dash where someone can rest their phone. Provide some USB and iPod inputs so music can be streamed into the car's stereo system. An AC adapter for each passenger would be nice. The skeptic in me thinks some of the integrated gadgetry is a scam to make it where the average person can't work on his own vehicle. I don't think we're far from the point where a car has to be hooked to a $100,000 proprietary device at the dealership just to change the oil or an air filter. What happens when this stuff breaks? Key-less entry and start up is really convenient. But what if the system running it goes on the blink and has you locked out of your car and the vehicle unable to start? I can see drivers getting so dependent on their vehicle's rear mounted camera and collision detection system they'll just keep backing up without looking when that system stops working unexpectedly. Then the real fun will happen. There's a lot of technological push to make it where vehicles can drive themselves. More and more new vehicles can parallel park themselves. To be turned into a mere passenger when you're in the driver's seat is kind of depressing. On a fundamental level vehicles are so freaking expensive anymore that once you have one and have it paid off you won't want to buy another one for a long time. Computerized gadgets in a 10 year old vehicle are going to seem laughably primitive compared to a portable device someone can bring into the vehicle. This is essentially why I think some other ideas to integrate technologies together are stupid. A bunch of the technology press keeps salivating over the rumors of an Apple branded HDTV set. I think having a DVD player integrated into a TV is stupid enough. Integrating a computer that's gonna go obsolete in 2-5 years into a TV set that customers will expect to last a decade or more is even more stupid. I guess some bean counting executives are masturbating over the fantasy of consumers buying new HDTV sets every 1-2 years just to have the latest version made by Apple.  |  IP: Logged Mitchell Dvoskin Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1869 From: West Milford, NJ, USA Registered: Jan 2001 posted 02-21-2013 02:40 PM                     My girlfriend gave me her 2003 Corolla when she bought her new one back in 2011. The dealer did not want it due to the high mileage. It had about 320,000 miles on it, and I figured I would use it to commute until it died, as it gets much better gas mileage than either my Mustang Convertible and my Jeep Liberty. It now has about 340,000 miles on it, and is still running trouble free. The only thing I have done to it is change the oil every 3,000 miles (as did my girlfriend before me). As to my 2003 Jeep Liberty, it is the worst piece of crap I have ever owned. It was poorly engineered, poorly built, from crappy components. I just got another recall notice in the mail, indicating that the air bags may go off at any time without warning, but they do not have the part to fix the problem. Chrysler will let me know when the part becomes available. Never again will I own a Chrysler vehicle. Never. Back in the 1970's, I owned a Fiat X-1/9, which was also a poorly designed and built piece of garbage. No wonder Chrysler felt at home selling out to Fiat.  |  IP: Logged Randy Stankey Film God Posts: 6539 From: Erie, Pennsylvania Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-21-2013 04:34 PM                     I'm not THAT much against seat belts and air bags. My only complaint is that there is a pellet of solid rocket engine fuel two feet from your face. While it's not common, by any means, they can go off without apparent cause and it is a bad enough problem to warrant concern. I have air bags in my car(s) but I still look at them with jaundiced eye. When air bags were first marketed they were supposed to be in place of seat belts. It wasn't until they (the engineers) realized that the constraints they had to work under (full inflation in under 30ms) that they, somehow, became "supplementary." That just says to me that marketing drives deployment of such things, not real practicality. This drive to marketing is what's causing all these cars to be outfitted with so many gewgaws. They can't make better cars that get better mileage and are safer to drive so they just spend the research money figuring out ways to put in fancy toys to hoodwink people into thinking their cars are better. There really has been no great improvements in cars in, I'd say, ten to twenty years. Only more expensive gadgets. I loved my Dodge Neon. It got 30+ MPG on a bad day. On the open highway, it got 32-35. If I "hypermiled" it, I could get nearly 40. One time, driving I-40 over the Great Smoky Mountains between Oak Ridge, TN and Greensboro, NC, I got 42 MPG. That was with nearly 1,000 lbs. of projector equipment in the trunk, another couple hundred pounds of tools and luggage in the back seat and my 300 lb., fat ass in the driver's seat. The car was only rated for 800 lb. of passengers and cargo. My car didn't have any of the problems that people claimed they had with their Neons. I got over 120,000 miles out of it with nothing more than gas, oil and tire changes. I would have bought another Neon when I got rid of mine if Chrysler hadn't stopped making them. Why, instead of putting expensive, electronic gadgets into cars, why didn't Chrysler spend research dollars ironing the bugs out of existing cars like the Neon? My 13 year old Mazda 626 has in excess of 130,000 miles on it and, if it wasn't for the rust, I'd consider keeping it for another ten years. Living in Pennsylvania, rust is just a fact of life. :| That video from "Demolition Man" wasn't just meant to be funny. I thought it was but there was an underlying message. If it hadn't been for all of the electronic gizmos and "Auto-Drive" Stallone probably wouldn't have crashed the car. I'm not saying that electronics cause crashes but I still think that, in many cases, a human being able to intervene in an emergency is better than trusting machines.  |  IP: Logged Frank Cox Film God Posts: 2234 From: Melville Saskatchewan Canada Registered: Apr 2011 posted 02-21-2013 05:06 PM                        I decided to get a SUV instead of a half-ton truck because my main use for this thing is hauling candy out from "the city" for my theatre. A new truck would require a new cap, and since there's something to be said for heated cargo space, a SUV seems to be the thing to get. Plus I've found that I need something with a back seat about once every second blue moon: My wife's parents were here for a couple of weeks about ten years ago and I had to rent a car to pick everyone up from the airport and take them back. The back seat in this thing folds down to make more cargo space when I don't need a back seat (which is most of the time). I drive very little since I just walk when I'm doing stuff around town and only take the truck out for long trips that I seldom make, so any vehicle that I get will probably "age out" before it wears out. In the summer it's usually nice enough outside that walking is no hardship, and in the winter by the time I plug in the truck's block heater and let that sit for three or four hours, then start the truck and wait for it to warm up and be ready to actually drive somewhere, I could have already walked where I was going two or three times. So my truck pretty much just lives in my garage most of the time. I've never understood people around here who buy cars. With the road and weather conditions that we have here, this is truck country. Most people seem to understand that and there really aren't that many cars around here -- 90% of the vehicles you see on the street in the winter are trucks and SUV's but still: I passed someone driving a Smart Car, of all things, down the highway in an snowstorm a couple of weeks ago. I could barely believe it. A Smart Car in a snowstorm. Talk about taking your life in your hands. I'm sure that one of the highway plows could pick that thing up and toss it away without the operator even noticing. My choices for vehicles here are Ford or GM unless I want to buy from a dealership that's out of town, which I don't. So I looked at the Ford and I looked at the GM and it seems that I get quite a bit more for my money with the Ford than I get with the GM. I promised myself years ago that my next vehicle was going to be a four wheel drive since my Ranger doesn't have that and I've often wished that it did. I took the GM and the Ford both on a test drive where I went onto a rather poorly maintained gravel road with some loose snow on it and stopped, then floored the accelerator. The Ford Escape hugged the road better than the GM when I did that, and I felt more secure. That's pretty much what sold me on it, right there. My new truck is currently sitting on a railroad car somewhere. They initially told me that it would be here by the 15th, but now they say it will be here between Monday and Wednesday of next week. Oh well. I don't have anywhere that I need to be going for the next while anyway.  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-21-2013 06:01 PM                        quote: Randy Stankey When air bags were first marketed they were supposed to be in place of seat belts. It wasn't until they (the engineers) realized that the constraints they had to work under (full inflation in under 30ms) that they, somehow, became "supplementary." That's not true. You still need the seat belt in order to keep you from sliding forward under the air bag, and that has been true from day one. Air bags don't protect your knees, they just keep your torso from flying thru the windshield. I have a buddy who is a paramedic. He told me the airbag is a lifesaver on almost a weekly basis.  |  IP: Logged Manny Knowles "What are these things and WHY are they BLUE???" Posts: 4247 From: Bloomington, IN, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 02-21-2013 06:41 PM                     My current car is a basic Saturn Ion with manual windows and door locks. The radio is aftermarket, but that was a gift. Two things have changed in the past few years. I live in a place that "has winter" and I also do road trips now, which is something I never really did when I lived in California. So, I have started thinking about the features I want in my next car. Winter makes me wish for: Heated seats, heated steering wheel and 4-wheel drive. Road trips make me wish for: Cruise control and built-in GPS. Oh, yeah! One more... Getting older makes me wish for: a car that's easier to get in and out of -- so an SUV might be in the cards. Having said all of that, my car is about to hit 100,000 miles and it still runs great. The thing I like best about it is that it's already paid for. So, I'm going to hang onto it for a li'l while longer.  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-21-2013 07:07 PM                        I definitely agree on the ease-of-entry/exit thing. That's one thing I like about our SUV and pickup -- easy to get in and out of, and that's another reason I don't really want a bigger pickup - don't want to have to CLIMB in and out of it. We have heated leather seats in our new Escape. I don't like them... the heat is all under your butt-cheeks but not under your legs, so it feels weird. And, once it's been on for a few minutes even on the lowest setting it starts to feel uncomfortably warm -- for me at least. I don't know if all heated seats are this way or not. To be fair, we've had a mild winter this year so I really have not needed the heated seats so much....by the time you've sat there for a couple of minutes, body heat does its thing and the seat feels fine. If we get one of our famous Montana -25 spells, I might think differently...but we only see that kind of weather about once every two or three years, if that, so to me the heated seats aren't all that big a deal. My wife, however, likes them much more than I do. For GPS, I think a smart phone will do just fine and be updated continually so we didn't even buy the navigation package. Cruise control is an absolute necessity out here where you can drive on the freeways for hours at a time without ever having to hit the brakes. It has probably saved me from several speeding tickets!  |  IP: Logged

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