i made a viral reddit post; 2 car solution, vol 0

Good day, dear readers. Long time no talk.

A lot has happened in the past few months…

I am now owner of a baby child,

I redesigned the entirety of the MaxFindsCars site, and added a tool that tells you how many kidneys you’d have to sell to buy your dream car,

and I had a post on a niche automotive subreddit go kinda viral.

ALL of this, dear readers, has contributed to a new, ongoing series we will have on MaxFindsCars. I call it TWO CAR SOLUTION🎺🎉😤 

“what is this glorious, ambiguously named, fruition of conglomerated life events??” you ask?

Well, below we are going to talk about:

• wtf this new series is (spoiler: we are going to be finding the next two cars in the MaxFindsCars garage)

• wtf our requirements, vibes, and budgets are for these vehicles (spoiler: weird, unique, and pretty damn affordable)

• how tf we are going to evaluate/score each car we talk about to compare it against other options (spoiler: I might get a cease & desist from ol’ DeMuro’s proverbial Doug Score Corp)

But first, let me take a quick step back…

The having of a baby led me to reconsider some of my automotive priorities, and tbh my Mercedes sliding into a ditch last winter may have contributed a smidge as well…

That’s why I posted to the popular subreddit r/whatcarshouldibuy; to get the opinions from random people of unknown credentials, reliability, and intentions on the best next car for me to traverse Upstate NY winters in something resembling style, functionality, and financial… irresponsibility.

The requirements at the time were…

• Doable in Upstate NY winters. It doesn't have to be a 4wd truck, but if its not AWD/4WD, it should have traction control and ABS, and be able to handle some light snow with good tires. I'm not driving in snow often, so this just needs to be able to handle very basic inclement weather.

• It needs to be unique & fun, somehow. I don't want something too on the nose for my scenario, like a WRX or Golf R. Let's dig deep.

• It needs to have back seats. We are expecting our first child soon, so it needs to have room for a car seat.

• It needs to have heat. Maybe even heated seats.

• Highway Speeds. Needs to be able to do highway speeds below redline. Would like to be able to road trip the car and, while I don't care about comfort, I do care about making good time.

I got some absolute banger suggestions, most of which meeting those requirements.

TWO CAR SOLUTION🎺🎉😤, the series, will be us going through some of the best (and worst) suggestions from reddit to try to build the most fun, unique, and (what some may call) idiotic 2 car garage for my young family.

Slight twist though… I am changing the rules a bit.

The first (more boring) change to the requirements is that my wife’s Polestar 2 lease is up in August, and will need to be replaced (hence our needing a TWO CAR SOLUTION, rather than one new one to compliment the Polestar).

The other important and… highly personal change is that I have recently been wholly, automotively emasculated. Not only did I put the GLA45 in a ditch driving exceedingly slowly on a snowy driveway last year, and separately get stuck on some ice in my own driveway, but it started having some pretty concerning issues with the rear diff to the tune of constant horrific clunking coming from the ass end of the car. A diff fluid change helped for a bit, but from some reading it was a ticking time bomb.

So I parted ways with the GLA this fall to the enjoyment of my wallet, and to the sadness of my automotive obsessiveness. It was a weird feeling. The closest thing I can compare it to is breaking up with a crazy girlfriend.

Sure, the relationship could be fun at times, but in your heart of hearts you knew the right move for everyone was to break it off. Not that I’ve ever actually broken up with anyone, but… uh, ya know, I’ve seen it in movies (turns out most gals don’t like to put up with a guy that spends the majority of his disposable income on old German cars and stops listening to you when he hears a V8 coming down the road, surprise surprise).

Anyways, the GLA being gone meant we tried to tough out the winter with the Polestar only.

And that meant in January, when my wife went into labor earlier than expected we ended up at a hospital 40 mins from home while the snowstorm of the decade was going on outside. 2+ feet of snow on the ground, roads sketchy as hell, with a newborn and wife that were ready to get home.

Not exactly the situation where you want to test the all-weather capabilities of your leased electric vehicle with all-season tires.

SO… luckily we have an amazing family, and my in-laws offered to pick us up from the hospital in their GMC Sierra 2500 and weather the storm of the decade to get us home from the hospital safe and sound.

and while I am forever grateful to have had their help…

it is admittedly a bit emasculating to not have the equipment in your stable to get your wife and daughter safely home from the hospital yourself (at least for a fragile-ego’ed man like myself, who fancies himself a car guy).

SO ALL THAT TO SAY, with TWO CAR SOLUTION🎺🎉😤 I will be massively overcompensating for these recent experiences, and one of the new requirements is that one of our vehicles absolutely must be what I call a ‘go-anywhere’ car.

Actually, my bad dear readers… I am rambling. I got into this story by trying to explain what the updated requirements & rules for TWO CAR SOLUTION🎺🎉😤 will be.

Let me write them out, (semi) concisely, using the reddit post’s requirements as a guide:

Vibes:

• Both cars need to be unique & fun, in some way. I’m not interested in something too on the nose, like a WRX or Golf R.

• At least one of them people should think I am stupid for purchasing. This kind of goes without saying, basically every car I’ve purchased has checked this box.

• One car will be mostly my wife’s (…Borat voice), and one car will be mostly mine, meaning I’ll have to be able to make a strong case for both cars to my better half.

Features:

• Both cars need to have back seats. We are expecting our first child soon are the proud owners of a young baby child, so they need to have room for a car seat.

• Both cars need to have heat, and one (for my wife (Borat voice)) must have heated seats.

• Both need to be able to do highway speeds below redline. I would like to be able to road trip the car and, while I don't care much about comfort, I do care about making good time.

• One car needs remote start, or the potential to add it. My wife has gotten very used to this feature in the Polestar, and I don’t think it would go well for me if I tried to convince her to go back to the dark ages.

• Bonus points if one car is plug-in hybrid, and this is entirely because I recently installed an electric car charger at the house and am a willing victim of the sunk-cost fallacy.

Budget:

For this, we are going to be taking advantage of the new ‘Dream Car Cost Calculator’ on the MaxFindsCars site.

It helps you plot out every number you can think of for your monthly running costs, including financing, maintenance, gas, & more to get a realistic idea of what is really exiting your savings account each month as a part of your automotive ownership.

I built this largely for myself, because I am hopelessly optimistic and historically under-estimate maintenance costs and things like that.

I may have also built in a comparison tool to show the true cost of ownership of an older car (at the bottom of its depreciation curve, or beginning to slightly appreciate in some cases) vs a new car that heavily depreciates over the first few years of ownership.

This may or may not have specifically been to help convince my wife that older cars (which I by complete happenstance am more interested in) are financially ‘smarter’, when you look at your losses to depreciation each month…

Often they are much greater than the extra you’d pay in maintenance on a used car.

Anyways, all in I’d like the cars to come in under $1700/mo in TOTAL (as in, combined, not each (I’m not made of money (but maybe if you convince your friends to subscribe I will be someday))) expenses. That probably sounds high, but think about it this way…

Say you buy a new car for $40k (not that many of these exist anymore).

We will abbreviate the other factors here, but assume some basics: 10% down, 72mo financing, 6.5% interest, etc. All together you’re paying about $1000/mo out of pocket, including the loan, insurance, yadda yadda.

Because that $40k car will depreciate 40-50% after 5 years, your ACTUAL out of pocket each month is closer to $1300/mo, because you’re losing $300(ish) a month in the value of the vehicle.

So $1700 sounds high, but in reality it gives you space for roughly $50k in vehicles, which means we will have to get creative.

Evaluation:

To distill the above requirements, vibes and budget, each car is going to be evaluated 0-10 on a few facets of its proverbial game…

• Practicality (snooze) - i.e. how easy would it be to live with this car every day, and do every day things with it?

• Comfort (double snooze) - i.e. how much will my ass hurt after a 4 hour drive?

• Anti-Emasculation Factor - i.e. what are the odds I’ll ever get stuck in a driveway in it? Or need to get a ride from someone else because it can’t handle the conditions? Basically, how much will this car help me make up for my recent automotive inclement-weather transgressions?

• Budget Friendly - i.e. how much of the $1700/mo budget does it take up? Lower is better.

• Max Meter - i.e. how much does Max like the car? This is a very subjective score… do I think its cool, or weird in a good way? Does it have a certain character that I for some reason find enthralling? Is it so stupid that I would get a kick out of owning it? This is the wild card.

These will add up to a total score that will help us rank every car we discuss against each other, and eventually (hopefully) to a purchase (or two).

BUT HOW TF IS IT GOING TO ACTUALLY WORK?!

Fair question, dear reader. Each new volume of TWO CAR SOLUTION🎺🎉😤 will discuss one of the car’s suggested by our trusted reddit commenters, MaxFindsCars subscribers, and prob occasionally one I’ll just throw into the mix for fun.

Whichever car picked for that volume will include links to recently sold or currently for sale cars by MaxFindsCars partners. And in typical MaxFindsCars fashion we will discuss all the weird ins and outs of that particular vehicle, its history, vibes, etc.

Then we will price it out using the MaxFindsCars calculator, and score it. A familiar concept with uniquely MaxFindsCars execution (see: idiocy, tomfoolery, rampant optimism, and impending engine-out maintenance).

Volume 1 is coming soon. If you want to have a say in what car we will talk about first, take a gander at that reddit post and scan through the suggestions. Shoot me an email if one catches your eye.

I might ignore you, I might not. Luck of the draw, dear reader.

And remember…

MaxFindsCars.com is not, technically, free! By subscribing, dear reader, you have agreed to tell your friends about it.

In fact, I believe the contract specifically stated you had to each subscribe 100 of your closest friends, colleagues, enemies, exes, priests, pets, & sugar mommas. I’ll have to check the fine print to be sure, but you all may as well get started spreading the word in the meantime.

That's a wrap for today. And if you want more MaxFindsCars, be sure to follow Max’s Twitter (@maxjzin)

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