QOTD: What Was The Worst Beating You Ever Took?
Yesterday I talked about the worst kind of subprime lenders and how they misused the courts to collect their profits. There was a broad spectrum of reader response, including a few people who felt compelled to discuss the fact that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and therefore won the presidency. (To which I can only respond: that’s like awarding the Super Bowl win to the team with the most rushing yards.)
Here’s what we didn’t discuss: our own experiences with subprime loans and/or bad car deals. I suspect that there are some members of the B&B who have never so much as walked by a subprime lender; I also suspect that there are plenty of readers who are currently in a subprime situation right now but don’t want to admit it.
So for today, let’s consider two topics: a) What’s the worst car deal you ever made? and b) did you ever use a subprime source? I’ll start, of course.
When it comes to motorcycles, I haven’t been quite as sharp. In 1996 I decided that I wanted a new Yamaha FZR600. I was pretty tapped-out, credit-wise, at the time and I didn’t have a ton of income. I did have a paid-off ’86 Jaguar Vanden Plas but like most twenty-four-year-old men I felt that I was entitled to a new sportbike and a Jaguar. So I went to the shady Yamaha dealer in Grove City, Ohio and told him to get me bought no matter what. He came back with a purchase price of $4,999 and 36 months at 24.59% via “The Loan Zone”.
“Sounds good to me,” I said.
“Absolutely not,” my wife at the time said. So much for my Yamaha dreams. I had to wait until April of 2000 to buy a new sportbike, and that time I did it with cash. Still, I kind of wish I’d taken the Loan Zone deal. I would have had three more years to ride a relatively decent bike instead of suffering with my 1975 Honda CB550, which at the time did not yet have any hipster credentials. It’s bad to lose money on a deal; it can be worse to lose time.
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Biggest beating is going to be forced on me in about a year with my 2014 X1. Not due to financing, but because I'll be forced to sell it about 40,000 miles earlier than I planned, due to the ticking N20 timebomb under the hood. Warranty for failed timing chain guide extended to 70,000 miles by BMW, then it's a $17,000 gamble for the remainder of your ownership! I made money or broke even on all my mid-90s sportbikes. Bought and sold in college (early 2000s), using the miracle of eBay/Paypal + 0% credit cards. Good times.
They only got me once. I leased a 1988 Saab, my first grownup car. My wife was pushing for a Jetta GLI, and in retrospect, mama was right. This was before leasing was big, and I was wrong in calculation of the money factor. At some point I realized it was 17%, and my credit was much, much better than that. The beating continued when a leaf spring on the highway punctured the bottom of the transmission, and the same dealer rebuilt it, a major dealer on the Ramsey NJ auto strip. A year later, the transmission puked. Another shop rebuilt it, and the car went back at the end of the lease. I sued the dealer, and got some money, but nowhere near my actual repair bills and lost time. I am not a fan of the Ramsey Auto Group. I've been OK since...although my current CTS has eaten every "they all do that" part-wheel bearings, a throttle body, and an alternator, but as the price was right, and I bought it knowing that shocks, etc were going in the hopper, I'm not upset-I mod all my cars in some way. At 30k per year I can't lease and all of my cars end up eating parts, so the Caddy was cheap to get but no different to run than an off lease German, but with reasonable part prices and a lot less bizarre over engineering. I bought another Saab, later, but never got beat in the showroom again....