Friday, January 12, 2018

Choices

So, Mississippi.  Rather a poor state, all things considered.  Lots of trailer parks around here, and I drive by several of them on my way home.

And many of those dilapidated trailers have shiny cars with 22-inch rims and custom paint jobs parked in front of them.

Folks, 22 inch rims are not cheap.  Tires for those rims are not cheap.  Custom paint jobs are not cheap.  If you've sunk $10k or more of glitzy crap into a 1990's Lincoln Towncar, and you're living in a trailer, you have no one to blame but yourself for your living conditions.

A car will never be as valuable as it is today.  Cars depreciate.  They are not investments.  They don't make you money, unless you're buying junkers and fixing them up.  But driving your pimp-mobile around while living in a trailer doesn't make you cool.  It makes you a moron.

I wonder where they would be living if they took the money they've wasted on pimping their ride and put it into a house somewhere.  I spent less on my car than they spent on all the shiny bullshit and crap they put on their cars.  But I'm living in a rather nice house, and they're living in a rusty tin can in a park on the side of the highway.

Oh, and by the way, 22-inch rims on any car makes you a moron.  You're destroying the most important aspects of your car's performance:  THE TIRES and their connection to the road.  Cars are designed to have a certain amount of rubber between the road and the suspension.  When you screw with that, you screw with your ride.  When you screw with your ride, you shorten the life of your suspension and make the ride that much worse.  Whenever I see 22 inch rims, I see a person who has absolutely no clue what the mechanics of driving actually are.

3 comments:

River Rat said...

This is what happens when you live in a "shithole" I guess Trump was right.

MauserMedic said...

Trading shiny metal bits and feathers for chrome accessories. A hut's a hut.

Ragin' Dave said...

Another thing around here - ERDC. Army Corps of Engineers R&D department. You have people with multiple degrees in ACTUAL SERIOUS SHIT, making metric fuck-tons of money by figuring out how to either A) get our shit on target properly and on time, or B) Make the bad guy's shit go boom in spectacular fashion. They're the guys who get out of a 1990's truck or some other older car, wearing blue jeans and a flannel shirt, not looking like they're the richest guys in town. Not once have I seen a car with 22 inch rims go rolling into the ERDC compound.

I bet their houses are awesome.