Oversized brakes

Your comments about the BMW are not based in fact.

It's a ridiculous question, as no matter how many vehicles you own, you can only drive one at a time.

Yes and while 10 of your other vehicles are sitting at home, motor oil and transmission fluid as well as radiator fluid are dripping underneath them and into the soil and storm drains.

What? Please. Don't ever buy into this myth.

Brad

Thanks Brad for the second opinion.

Budget in for new wheels too. If you get bigger rotors and calipers, they probably won't fit under stock wheels.

------------- Alex

Nuts. I have a Cougar, a Cutlass, a Sentra, a Lincoln, two Yamahas, a Suzuki, a Honda, a Dodge Ram, a firetruck and a Watchamacallit (has to be seen to be believed), none of them is leaking anything anywhere. It doesn't hurt anyone but me to own that many vehicles- the insurance is ridiculous.

The other gentleman has a point- one should not be required to carry liability insurance on every single vehicle. It would make far more sense to simply have one's *license* contingent with a liability policy. Poor drivers would have to pay more and they wouldn't be able to fudge the system by registering a vehicle in someone else's name (who has a better record). No insurance, no license. The economic penalties would be applied squarely where they belong- on the bad drivers.

I agree, but that system could only go so far. If something happens to your car while it is parked & the driver who hit you got away (or it was something else, like a tree limb fell on your car) nobody was driving, so Comprehensive & Collision would have to remain attached to the car. And even for liability, if the parking brake wasn't set and your car rolls down the hill & hits somebody, who pays? Legally it would be the last person who drove the car, but finding out who it was is non-trivial.

This is the insurance industry's explanation for why insurance is attached to the car. Still, I agree, it would make more sense for drivers to carry their own liability coverage, but car owners would need their own coverage anyway.

Is the BMW 535 an SUV? I didn't know BMW made SUV's in '92.

I wouldn't mind a BMW motorcycle. Only I'm afraid because all of our roads and highways have gotten increasingly congested and dangerous in recent times. I'm paranoid. I'd love a BWM though. Something that doesn't look like a ticket magnet to the police though. I need to keep a clean driving record as I'm going into truck driving.

Good points. Yes, comprehensive would have to remain with the vehicle, since it would be the vehicle itself that is being insured. A SMALL liability rider on the vehicle for freak accidents such as you describe should be relatively inexpensive. Statisticly (sp?) how often do things like that happen?

I actually carry extra liability coverage, in amounts of five to ten times the minimums...but that extra coverage only costs less than five dollars per year per vehicle.

Taking your points into account, my suggestion is still do-able and far more equitable than the current system in those areas where coverage is mandatory.

A nationwide mandatory liability policy on licenses would be a good thing. I think there are still some states where it is possible to carry no coverage at all on the vehicle.

Properly maintained, he's absolutely right, at least for the vintage of car to which he's referring. Now my opinion of *new* BMW products is not that high as they seem to have traded basic mechanical excellence for gimmicks and gadgets (IDrive anyone?)

n

I would love a new BMW some day. I'll wait a decade or two. The quality issue will be a none-issue.

Or else I can buy an older model between '90 and '95 and fix it up like new. That's a good 5 years for BMW right?

IMHO as far as BMWs go, the 1600/2002/3.0 era was the best and it was all downhill from there. But maybe I'm just a retro-grouch.

nate

Neighbour leased a new Bimmer a few years back - never had the car out of the shop for longer than 2 months at a time for the duration of the

3 year lease. Had posession for just over 2 of those 3 years. He cursed that car for 5 years after he got rid of it. Leased a new Supra to take it's place. At the end of the 3 year lease he bought it and kept it another 5. Lost one DAY of use due to unscheduled repair (tranny leak) in 8 years. Then he got a MB Eclass. Within 2 months it was in the shop for a new engine - and was tied up for 6 weeks. That was just the beginning - so he got a Camry and hasn't looked back.

A Bimmer or a Benz is fine as a status symbol, or as a second car. If you've got loads of spare cash.

I like it.

According to California's DMV, 40% of drivers in some areas (example: Rancho Cordova, a fairly well-off suburb of Sacramento) have no insurance, and another 40% have only the minimum (15/30/5, the lowest in the country). I take two lessons from this:

1) Carry the highest uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage you can afford, because there's a good chance you'll need it if you get hit. 2) Carry enough liability coverage to protect your assets. You wouldn't believe how many people I talk to who own houses worth $300k or even 500k, but carry the minimum coverage. If you make the 11:00 news -- and somebody does, at least once a week just in the Sacramento area -- who's going to wind up owning that house?

But back to your proposal. I like the idea of having the DMV enforce coverage, but you don't need to attach the insurance to the license to accomplish that. Many states -- NV, for one -- attach it to the car registration. If you let your insurance lapse, the DMV wants your plates back -- and any cop who runs the plate number will find it flagged as expired. They have a much higher compliance rate than we.

Yeah; you are. Either that or you're in a parallel 'rust-free' universe. Those things rusted if you exhaled wrong at 'em. Lotta fun to drive - for as long as they still had an intact body structure. Now, Big Sixes from the late '80s - *those* are great BMWs.

-- C.R. Krieger '88 535is

I had one, if you remember... loved it. But the basic mechanics descended straight from the lovely 3.0CSi (I did get that right didn't I? BMW nomenclature is so confusing) which was simpler, purer, and WAY better looking than even the 635 that was its direct spiritual successor.

If I cared about rust, would I have just bought a '55 Stude coupe? Talk about a lovely car that rusts if you don't wipe your sneeze off the windshield instantly... C.R. you need to discover that there really is a parallel rust-free universe, and it exists only south of the Mason-Dixon line (or so far north that it never thaws...) anymore I "import" my "toy" cars from AZ, TX etc... I hate rust just as much as the next guy, so I don't deal with it :)

nate

Absolutely. I was going to cut back my coverage from $500k...but it turned out that the extra cost was only a few dollars per year (less than $5)- definitely worth it. I don't worry about a lawsuit taking my property, I set up a trust to hold the real estate so it provides a level of insulation from that sort of thing (among other advantages).

That is precisely the thing I'd like to change. I live in such a state and must pay full premiums on every single vehicle for that reason. It is unfair and inequitable to be required to carry seperate policies on each vehicle when a single policy on the license would provide the necessary protection.

There are people with poor driving records who register their vehicle(s) in the names of others with better records in order NOT to pay the high premiums they ought to be paying as a consequence of their propensity to cause damage. (In some areas rates are calculated, at least in part, based on the address of the place of garaging, and it is not uncommon for people to fudge the system by reporting an address of a friend or relative who lives in an area where the rates are cheaper.) These are flaws in the system that could be rectified by my proposal. By attaching the major portion of coverage to the license, high-risk drivers would be forced to pay their own freight, and if they could not find (or afford to pay for) coverage appropriate to their risk level then they would not be allowed to drive. This would be beneficial in either reducing the number of high-risk drivers on the road and/or putting the cost of the damage they cause on the persons responsible.

In the vast majority of cases it is the driver and not the vehicle which is responsible for damages, it is a rare thing indeed for a vehicle to start itself up and drive off to cause an accident. (All humor-impared people can see me later for an explanation and complementary dope-slap.) At current count I own eleven vehicles (I think), but I can drive only one at a time. Why should I be required to carry full liability policies on vehicles that are not being driven? (Obviously, fleet owners who have many employees driving their vehicles would not be eligible for this type of program, though I should think that their costs could also be reduced by putting the majority of responsibility on the drivers themselves.) Why should you or I or anyone else have to shoulder the costs of the damages caused by Joe Reckless?

The more I think about this the more irate I become. It's time for a change.