Had an offer accepted on a house right before the holiday season, went to the inspection today. If you couldn't guess from the title, it didn't go so good!

To start with, when we saw the place, it had some minor electrical issues. Namely, that the power didn't work in about 60% of the house. So we told them to fix it so we could actually, you know, inspect it, but were fine with the assumption it was probably a bad feed to the subpanel, which knocked out everything on the subpanel.

They went to go and work on it, and it was taking a while. So long we actually had to push the inspection back. OK, no harm, no foul. Well apparently the seller was annoyed at some point that we wanted, you know, working fucking electricity, and proceeded to piss and moan to his agent, who proceeded to piss and moan to my agent every time they were on the phone about how the seller was "really upset because he was already providing a credit to repair the sunroom roof and didn't think he should have been on the hook for $4500 in electrical work". This persisted until my agent basically lost it on him, and said if he hears about the electrician one more fucking time he's never bringing another buyer to one of his properties.

That was before the inspection! It does not get better!

Leaving aside the asbestos shingle siding covering the entire house, which would take easily $15k to abate and conveniently was not disclosed to us, the minor roof leak turned out to be covered by a 20x16 tarp held down by concrete planters installed by goofballs who didn't know how to walk on a roof and ripped off half the ridge cap and a bunch of shingles that we could see. So the roof is shot, which is all the more evident by the standing water inside the sunroom. Oh, standing water which had frozen, because the furnace was apparently out. Which also broke the pipes, and also broke the PEX where they tried to patch out a couple of bad joints. Why they couldn't just solder in new copper is beyond me, but hey it's all leaking anyways so who gives a shit. The furnace is also leaking - did I mention that? All the sheetrock in the semi-finished basement had been floodcut and left in the yard, which I swear I do not remember being like that when I made the offer, but the inspector was the one who noticed it, so what do I know.

So my agent goes to call their agent like "uh, do you know the furnace is out". He calls the seller, and the seller apparently says it must be out of oil, and proceeds to blame the previous tenant for not having it filled. Question 1) What fucking tenant is responsible for filling oil? Question 2) How the fuck does the seller not know what the oil level is? Question 3) Did he not think we would see the previous repairs, which were done so piss fucking poorly they were already leaking again? Question 4) Why would he waste my fucking money to have the place inspected in this condition? And most important, Question 5) since the frozen pipes obviously blew water all over the place, which probably fucked up the electrical to begin with, why the fuck wouldn't he fix the fucking furnace?

As these were the shittiest, laziest excuses we'd ever heard, without as much as an apology and with nothing but a bunch of excuses, We pulled out of the deal. I told my agent if they ask why, tell them it's because they're fucking braindead and clearly have no idea what they're doing, and I'm not letting them waste any more of my time or money. Good fucking riddance.

First of all welcome DT people
I'm worried our new friends don't quite grasp what's acceptable and unacceptable Oppo content, so I wanted to point them in the right direction for future posts. Glad to have you all!

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Congratulations @Spitfire_1600 for being user #1000!!!!!!!!!!!!! We made it oppo fam
praise uppu

@GibbsEmphasis old meme i made for oppo

Things on the V12 front started to get real real when we had an offer accepted on a house, that was well under-budget even inclusive of whatever we could throw at it financially to polish it up and bring it out of the 1960's. I pointed out to my wife that for the first time, now that the last house is sold, and given we had a new one under contract, if the right car came on the market I would be bidding. Like the keeper she is, she basically said she couldn't argue with that. So - hypothetical threshold in the rearview: check.

Well, the house thing went disastrously (details here). So technically I should not be car hunting. But I have been on and off market watching for close to 2 years now waiting for the right 3rd car - occasionally shooting at a moving target based on the strength of the collector car market and the status of my finances. But now that the old house is sold and I did slightly better than I expected, and given that there's this baby that just showed up here one day, I'm pretty much settled on either a 456 or a [redacted] [no i will not tell you what it is].

Problem is, there just haven't been many cars for sale that I was interested in. There have been two [redacted] for sale in a good 6-8 months, neither of which were priced too aggressively or were local to me. Fine. There was a 456 I was close to consummating off-market, but the guy decided to keep it because he realized he couldn't buy anything better with the proceeds. Tough to argue that. The others were either black, which I don't want, or were ultra low mileage, late model 456M's, which are not the same, and for reasons I don't totally understand, vastly more expensive.

And today - lo:
https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1995-ferrari-456-gt-23/

We are through to the other side now: I have asked the wife. There is no going back.
Criteria 1: if I am going to test drive it, she is coming too. I said sure. Turns out the travel will be about 14 hours each way, and I do not intend to stay more than a night, so I am gonna go out on a limb and say she's going to reconsider this.
Criteria 2: purchase cannot impact house hunt budget. I told her I would maybe pull back the very top of our "reach" budget, where we're past a max loan and just have to throw in cash. This did not go well.
Criteria 2a: purchase cannot impact house hunt budget.
Criteria 3: I actually told her she needs to sleep on it, because she did not have a criteria 3 at the ready, and I have this sneaking suspicion if there is no criteria 3 for me to agree to, she will give me a criteria 3 after the car is already in the garage that I would otherwise not have agreed to.

Married life, fokls

K I'm going to go back to meditating now and deciding how stupid I really want to be with my money. Can't take it with me, I always say.

It sort of just happened. I will field no questions on how. I did not steal the car. Nor did my accomplice. I mean the guy I was with.

Overall impressions:

• I was told the interiors on these were not particularly exotic. I can see where the opinion came from, but I wouldn’t agree. Lots of CF and thoughtful detailing, though it wasn’t as leathered out as most Ferraris or even many Maseratis.
• First gear really only passed the pants test once you got up there in revs. Second gear was a bullet. It just never stops pulling after that. Never.
• It was fast, but I was never afraid of it and don’t think I would be at 8/10ths on backroads. I cannot imagine this car in a manual, the thought of which is moderately terrifying.
• It sounds great but restrained. I wish there was slightly more engine noise in the cockpit, which is not the same as throwing an exhaust on it and saying close enough.

Overall super nice car but a quick drive wasn’t life changing for me. Would it have been in a manual? Maybe, if I didn’t grenade the rev limiter or kill myself.

Not to make light of the ongoing tragedy in Europe, but I'll admit I lol'ed at this. I particularly like the effort that went into replicating the tissue-paper thin manual where the reverse text bleeds through.

@Demon-Xanth unrelated but I need a favor

After much thought, I have decided not to go to Santa Barbara.
Part 1: I still do not know if I can afford this car (more on that in a second)
Part 2: I still do not know if I can physically fit in this car (more on that in a second)
Part 3: It would be extremely irresponsible of me to fly cross country twice during COVID with a 5-month old baby waiting for me at home, not having the utmost confidence in 1 and 2.

On part 2: as it turns out I have never driven a 456. I've wanted to mind you, but I literally have not seen a single one for sale within driving distance in 2 years. Incredible. As someone 6'5" with size 14 feet, it is not at all a surefire thing. I have fit in and driven some small-ish cars in the past - I have a RX-8 and an Elantra, had a B14 200SX, a Focus SVT, a Protege... I have driven compacts and subcompacts basically forever. Having said that, none of these are $80,000+. I HAVE driven a Maserati Coupe GT (not getting into that shitstorm), and found it "cozy" to be generous. From the limited information that's out there, the Maser seems to be closer in size to the 612, and the 456 is smaller. So that's definitely not promising.
The seller, being a true peach, has taken some representative measurements of the car for me to compare against the RX-8, at which point I'll debate how much I want to make a fool of myself on FChat by offering bottles of Opus or something to literally drive someone local's car around the block. So that's the first problem.

Problem the second: did you know that Ferraris are very expensive to own and operate? When you take it all bit by bit you're like "yeah, I can do this. $1100 a year for fluids? Need the occasional $9k major? It's doable." But then you write it all down in one place, and make a table, and hooooolllyyyyy shit.
Based on my math, all-inclusive, would you like to take a guess at the total operating cost per mile of a Ferrari 456? Like 1500 miles a year, which is enough to drive it without putting it into receivership. And I do mean total, with gas/insurance/all that crap, and in the interest of transparency, paying to have it stored, since I'm not doing a "best case" analysis for this.

Go ahead. Think about it.
Here's another picture of the car before the answer after:

Ten. Dollars.
$10.
Per mile.
Ten American Dollars.
One thousand pennies for each mile.
Ten
Dollars
($10)
Per Mile.
TEN DOLLARS.
Alternately, .2 cents per foot. If you forgot a shirt at the dry cleaners, it's literally cheaper to write it off and buy a new shirt. If you take the 'rarri round trip to work (~50 miles r/t) it cost you more to take that drive than you take home that day in a $100k a year job.

Mind you, again, this was inclusive of everything, including year round storage in what I used as the "75% worst case". Storage, insurance, minor annual, major every 5 years, cost of gas, cost of consumables/unplanned repairs (at $2/mi in a "upper bound" scenario), and - now this is important here - depreciation, which I took as a mileage expense because it was easier to analyze on a break-even.

In my "75% best case" I took lower numbers on the servicing and consumables, winter storage only, but otherwise same gist. Still like $7.50 a mile. I could go to 4,000 miles a year, which gets me to jusssst about $4 a mile in the best case, but then it's still $16,000 to run the car for a year, or $25,000 a year in the worst.

Yeah, you can nitpick and say "hrrmwell its actually a flat cost price with a supplemental mileage charge that you should be using as the basis for your trip cost analysis heh" but you know what FUCK THAT. TEN DOLLARS. It would still have been like $3-4 an incremental mile anyways, which is enough that my eyes are still bleeding after writing this entire interblag.

I made this chart, which I am too tired to explain right now. OK, fine, I'll half ass it. The red lines are sale prices after appreciation if the car was not driven. Basically put the car in a garage and sell it after that many years. Very lame. The blue and green lines are total expenses incurred through that year, using those expenses above. This is where "driving the car" hits. Yes, a car with more miles sells for less money than a car with less miles, but I am taking $1-1.50/mi as a depreciation expense, and counting that the same as an out-of-pocket expense. So the net sale would be the same (e.g., $150k sale price after adding miles, less $175k in expenses is -$25k... or alternately, $175k sales price with no miles added, less $200k in expenses and mileage is still -$25k). Some accountant can probably explain that better than me, but the only accounting I have left in my brain right now is
TEN DOLLARS.

@CarsOfFortLangley half and half is the correct ratio

@WBizarre Mazda proving ONCE AGAIN that the smallest company run well can murder even Ferrari in the looks department. The previous Vision and RX Vision were a decade ahead of their times based on what’s coming out of maranello these days. The forthcoming Ferrari 498 or whatever should have these exact headlights in 2031

@GibbsEmphasis no this is a stupid opinion and you should feel bad

@Fish-McSticks I’m not seeing what we’re making fun of

@DipodomysDeserti downvote

@davesaddiction It's really hard not to like him.

@davesaddiction This was pretty widely expected even prior to this past weekend.

@davesaddiction I hope that Max got it out of his system and they can go back to being good teammates. Checo would have taken a bullet for Max last season. I don't blame Max for feeling miffed over Monaco and think this was a suitable degree of payback even if it was a little childish especially with how hard Checo pushed for Max last year. But hopefully they had a chance to yell at each other and get it out of their system. I like to imagine these guys like older/younger brother rather than two hypercompetitive kids that live a couple houses apart.

@GrindIntoSecond I have this in 3/8" and it's aces.

@notsomethingstructural I mean, I guess if you're using a fixed bezel with lume and markers it's OK. I dunno. This is all weird by design which makes it very challenging.