Just sanded and primed. May go purple.

 

In most cases, I’m not really a fan of purple on cars but purple steel wheels with those black hubcaps might look pretty cool.

 

I’ll try one. See how it looks. If I don’t like it I’ll just spray it black again.

 

The problems with my car are growing. I really need a new one. Good luck finding one at MSRP these days.

 

I decided I need to Choroq the alltrac.

 

And then I did one for Donut’s contest.

 

Decided to make one last shirt of my car before all my printing equipment is gone.

 

Mine and my wife's jeeps at the Butler, PA Jeep Invasion during the Bantam Jeep Heritage Festival this past weekend.

 

Finally things are progressing. I am testing driving the 2023 Sportage on Sunday at a local dealer 5 minutes from my house. I found a dealer who is willing to sell me the car at MSRP no dealer add ons. I just have to drive the 1:45 all the way to Tucson. They do not have what I want currently but next week they will get more.

 

Anybody watching the Barrett Jackson auction?

 

Well that didn't go as planned. The guy who I was supposed to meet didn't appear. They didn't have the car and couldn't even have the common courtesy to tell me. I tried to put a deposit on a different one and they wouldn't get rid of $2100 of dealer add ons, none of which i would pay for. That was a waste of time. I feel bad for what ever sucker pay $46,000 for that car. That was the initial offer. I will try a different local dealer and if all else fails try Tucson.

 

Kia Australia just bumped up prices, which is standard in this current environment. The kicker: Buyers who previously laid down a pre-order deposit will have to accept the new price hike or cancel their order.

 

In another city for a convention and park my car.

Find another vehicle wearing an Autobot badge with a spot open next to it.

You better believe I got right back to my car and moved it.

(My car on the left)

 

^ Huh? If it had a Decepticon badge I'd understand moving the car.

 

Anyone interested in participating in a fantasy game?
I'm sure many of us have had daydreams of our own personal back to the future kind of concept, right?

What if you were given a one time opportunity to travel back in time - limited to just a few hours - to convince your parents to swap your current day car for one of the cars your parents had during your childhood - teens.
Perhaps there was one particular car amongst those they owned which you would consider something special even in our present day. I remember those days when childhood friends and me would compare our dads' cars. Always with the kind of mindset "My dad's car is better than your dad's car".

But maybe this is also very much about the parent-child relationship, even moreso than just about the cars.
Like, what did they pay for that car back in the days? - taking domestic inflation rates into consideration - and how does that compare to what you paid for your current day car.
More important perhaps, what would the odds be of convincing your parents to swap that particular car for your car, the moment they're about to purchase that car in the past. Remember, you're only granted a few hours in the past before you have to go back to the future. On the flipside; in this fantasy version of time travel, an item from the future left in the past, would NOT age/wear down until it reaches the point in time where you travelled from. Basically, you'd be giving your parents free of cost car ownership; added bonus to convince them to swap.

Of course, we have to take context into consideration:
- which time era
- which country
(regarding legal age of driving license and historical inflation rates)

Sadly, my father passed away May 2020 and with remembering him in the past years, I started to gloss over the cars he had throughout all the years. The era I cover starts with my earliest memories, the early 1980's (I'm from 1978) until late teens 1996.
Country of context is the Netherlands (legal age of driving license is 18). The Dutch 1980's - 1990's car market probably differs quite a bit from say, the USA car market of those years.

My father's car list starts with the Peugeot 305. Forgettable, because French cars of that era had the tendency to corrode like crazy and there were rampant oil leakage issues.

The next chapter introduced the Volvo's to our family, as my dad insisted on safety by then. This is an interesting chapter because the Volvo 300 series was actually a Swedish-Dutch-French collab effort (engine units sourced from Renault). The models my father purchased included the Volvo 340 GL 1.4 sedan, the 340 GL 1.7 sedan refresh of 85/87 and finally the 460GL 1.7 sedan.

So the next chapter is the one which features the car I would pick to swap out for my car: the Audi 80 1.6E sedan B4 1994. In the USA this car was marketed as the Audi 90 - funny in a way because in Europe the Audi 90 was a seperate coupé model.
Introduced European markets, the Audi 80 B4 was Audi's first real effort to enter the premium compact sedan market; so far dominanted by the BMW 300 series and the Mercedes 190 series. The Audi 80 B3 that preceded the B4 was highly successful, but it wasn't considered a premium car.
Despite the fact my father was personally well acquainted with the local Audi/VW car dealer, the deal negotiation was - as kind of expected - not easy on my father's savings. After all, he was trading in his Volvo 460 (and by all means, that was a great sedan for its time) for an Audi purchase.

Result was the purchase of the 1994 Audi 80 entry version, in metallic dark emerald green. Emphasis on entry. When time came to pick up the car from the dealership, with my little kid brother and myself on the rear seats of course - my father started the engine and oh boy....in astonishment, I wondered if they put one of those little RC car engines in this car's big engine bay; Because this 1.6E sounded feeble and measly.

But before I get to the car swap/comparison, the next chapter car still deserves an honourable mention;
The Volkswagen Passat B5 97/98. My father switched from Audi to VW, because by that time, cars of both
brands started to share way more platform technology and the Passat B5 seemed to offer way more value for money than the successor of the Audi 80, the Audi A4.


Finally, now onto the actual car swap/comparison.
There's a bit of twist to this story because I migrated from the Netherlands to the Philippines, Dec 2018.
This means I would try to swap out my Philippine market Honda Jazz/Fit RS 2018/2019 for my father's Audi 80 1.6E 1994.


Honda Jazz RS 2018


The European and American counterparts of this Philiipine market Jazz RS are very similar, albeit with a few differences. Before I moved to the Philippines I did have a more potent hatchback, but yeah...investment into my own business, bought a new house and bought this Jazz, paid full in cash.

Spec comparison (imperfect Google translate):


Of course, in context of trying to convince my parents to swap the Audi for the Honda, I do need to keep in mind the family car requirement - because we were a family of 4 after all.
What I noticed having moved to the Philippines, the most common type of car is the subcompact class sedan...or sometimes mocked as "EconoBoxes". Funny thing is though; these 'little subcompact sedans' have evolved to the extent that they resemble the European compact sedans of the 90's - the Jazz sort of fits into that category as well. In fact, before buying this Honda Jazz, I considered the local Volkswagen Santana....which spec-wise, is almost identical to the Audi 80.

As I hinted at earlier, the engine in this Audi 80 1.6E sounded puny - and indeed, it made this 1204 KG car move at glaciel speeds. This is where the 'modern' Jazz certainly has the upper hand, even without a turbo. Gasoline economy is better as well.
I guess the one thing I would really have to convince my parents would be in regards to the interior space and cargo capacity. However, the Jazz has the "Magic Seats", which can fold down flush all the way to increase cargo capacity to a fantastic 1314 liters.

In terms of pricing.
Supposedly, they got the Audi 80 for about 19508 Euros (tramslated from the previous Dutch Guilder). According to the Dutch inflation calculator this would nowadays be about 32600 Euros.

However, for this Jazz RS there is quite a big twist, since the Philippine market prices and inflation rates are different from the Netherlands. In fact, the Dutch Jazz equivalent costs almost 10K Euro more than my Philippines version....differences include: Engine with 10hp more, all sorts of electronic safety features like lane departure prevention etc. and rear wheel ventilated disc brakes instead of drums. Although, the Dutch version also weighs 40 kilograms more. I will include the calculation for the Dutch version as well.


Dutch Jazz


I suppose you could say my parents paid almost 3 times as much for their Audi 80 than I paid for my Honda Jazz.
Then there's the modern rich interior feature list of the Jazz and that by comparison, it steers around a lot more easily.
In terms of safety, like Volvo, I think the Audi 80 featured the extra side door impact protection beams and before airbags became mainstream, Audi featured their proprietary ProconTen technology; which basically retracts the entire steering column upon frontal crash impact. The Jazz however, has 6 airbags include side curtain airbags.

To conclude, I think I would have a pretty good chance at convincing my parents for the swap.
I wonder if any of you here have interesting swaps of your own in mind.

 

Kinda bending the rules a bit but my dad had a mk. III I think Supra before I was born so I’d probably try to convince him to trade that for my civic si

 

My baby, my 2008 Acura CSX .. got her many years ago and she's been amazing to me.. nibble and quick, she's been my little race car who's first and second gear will let me pull away from traffic easily.

Just got the bits of rust fixed a month or so ago, as I want to keep her going for as long as possible.

Purchased for 15K at the time (used) when she was just a few years old...

I know many consider it as an Acura brand Civic, but when you've driven both, you can tell that this ain't no Civic.. the difference is quite apparent in just about every way. I tend to explain her as she's the real thing while the Civics have a dollar store ko feel to them next to it.

 

Crazy. I am coming up to 1 year with my 2023 Hyundai Tucson.