The crazy Van won Best in Show in my small town

Not the production date, but today is when we took delivery in 1984, so that's as good as I can come up with for a birthday.

That's me on the first day of preschool...temp tags still on it!!

A quick first effort. I’ll plan this out better next year

Loaded up and trucking

Resolving to drive it more in 2022

@rallydarkstrike my parents bought this when I was a kid, so it’s effectively one owner (my dad, then me). 1984 LE 5MT. The only options it doesn’t have is dual sunroofs, ice maker, and the fancier wheels. And automatic obviously.

A few months after we got it, we road-tripped to Disney and Kennedy Space Center (where this was taken….I’m the smaller dude).

As if you ever needed a reason, crank up some ZZ Top in his honor.

@shop-teacher Back when I was an auditor, I was visiting one of our manufacturing plants. I noticed the plant manager ordered catering a lot...like almost weekly and often 2x per day. We chatted about it and he said "if you want people to show up and listen to you, feed them". Pretty solid advice. All the people in the plant liked him and it was one of our better run paint plants. Solid approach.

(the multiple per day was to make sure each shift was taken care of)

Also, from Reddit: “Never thought I would spend 3+ hours watching it rain in another country.”

It feels like a one-off to plug the gap could have been doable make a rust-belt Monaco: BURKE LAKEFRONT AIRPORT. The Cleveland GP was almost always an epic CART/ChampCar race.

I think as long as they treated it somewhat like the COVID season gap-filler races it could work this year. Tack it onto one of their next visits to the Americas.

@Zaphod-s-Heart-of-Gold yup. and I can't quite figure out the mental gymnastics to Free Bird being the #1 song. It was a popular enough album and single, but definitely not a #1-level of anything on the charts.

$1, Bob

I've been getting Car and Driver since November 1989, so I keep it now just for stubbornness I want to say I probably pay $5-8/year, so it's really not too bad. Each issue is a lot smaller than it used to be and I find myself skipping some/many parts.

I'll probably keep it until they turn out the lights.

@i86hotdogs was it a liter of cola?

@HammerheadFistpunch yup. Tremors, the Right Stuff, and Escape from Alcatraz all great and highly rewatchable!

@EssExTee I think what @MidEngine is getting at is the lease buyout (aka residual), is fixed and will not have changed from the time the lease started. Given the massive inflation in the market, there's a 90%+ chance the buyout would be below current market pricing.

The buyout still may be more than the current budget for a used car, but this may be a really smart path. Over the last 1-2 years people have been able to buy out their own leases then turn around and flip for a profit even if you have to pay sales tax on the transaction.

Crank up the Crazy Horse

@Long_Voyager94 yup, I know it’s far from perfect.

But as I said in my other reply, it’s a data point I like to get if possible. I don’t base my decision purely off the report.

@Long_Voyager94 it’s a data point I’d like to get. Not a replacement for an inspection.