In 2007 (?) my buddy bought a Ranger with nothing but A/C as an option. Not even stereo. Rubber mats, Corporate White, no power windows, stick shift, base engine, bench seat. He paid a little less than $12k. No way you can find something similar nowadays.

 

I have no issues with the aluminum, there are many cars on the road today that have aluminum in their bodies...ie, Austin Healey used it extensively back in the day. As for the "bells and whistles", I am a firm believer in the premise that "as complexity rises so does cost". Not only cost of intitial purchase, but cost of maintenance. We just got rid of a 2000 Lincoln LS that was the wife's DD...that car was Motor Trend's car of the year and had more bells and whistles than either of us knew how to use. Why pay to have the features if they are not used and especially when you MUST maintain them or the car is not operable?
Safety features are nice but are they REALLY necessary? Let's say we have the typical housewife driving her new car that has collision avoidance equipment on it...she becomes so used to the system braking the car for her that she relies on it to do the job that she, as the driver, should be doing. Sound familiar to anyone yet? Then she gets into a car that doesn't have this system and plows into the back of the first car she comes up on that is moving slower than her on the freeway. Unintended consequences are the gotchas when we allow govt/manufacturers decide how much control/responsibility we should relinquish to the nanny state.
I am all for better brakes, better tires, better lights, better safety glass, etc...but at some point we have to take some responsibility as the owner/operator of the vehicle. I would rather assume more responsibility and have the cash in my pocket rather than give it to someone who thinks they know better than I what I need to be safe on the road.

 

Exactly. And that's why I'm saying I'd wait till 2016. Let em work the bugs out of the new one. I learned that lesson the hard way last time.

 

Very well said! BTW, I had a Healey in Chicago in the 70's, the aluminum was disappearing where the bonnet joined the fenders.

 

I get your point. We are teaching people to be less responsible.

The truth is however that people are not responsible. The run over motorcycles every day. They text, they get drunk & say "ROAD TRIP". Sure you may never need it. But the crazy lady screaming at her kids needs it.

Frankly my kids are about driving age. I feel better knowing some technology is trying to do its part to keep them safe.

I follow what you are saying, but I'd rather you & everyone else has to pay for this to keep the drunks & medical marajuna group from killing my family.

 

Right, nothing has changed since the 70s.

 

You're right, CMK, I bet aluminum has changed its galvanic potential since then...

 

[quote=bra$$monkey;13949534]I get your point. We are teaching people to be less responsible.

The truth is however that people are not responsible. The run over motorcycles every day. They text, they get drunk & say "ROAD TRIP". Sure you may never need it. But the crazy lady screaming at her kids needs it.

Frankly my kids are about driving age. I feel better knowing some technology is trying to do its part to keep them safe.

I follow what you are saying, but I'd rather you & everyone else has to pay for this to keep the drunks & medical marajuna group from killing my family.[/quote]
It seems as though society today has turned a corner...it used to be that values were taught in the family and if a child needed discipline it came from the family. Now it seems as though people have relinquished this responsibility and feel that somehow the government needs to do it for them and they are OK with the government taking whatever resources it needs from the hardworking taxpayers of this country in the name of those who need protecting.
People need to take responsibility for themselves...parents need to instill in their children a sense of responsibility and not a sense that society is here to be their parents from cradle to grave. The next time you are driving down the road think about the car/truck coming the other way...is there anything other than the good sense of that driver that is going to keep him/her from corssing the center line and killing you both? So the real question is, how much government oversight do we need to be 100% certain that we are safe on the road? I don't think that my pockets are deep enough.

 

People are the problem. They are taught that they do not need to be responsible and if they screw up there is always an excuse. In 2012, Mrs. Jag and I were hit by a woman who ran the stop light. Fortunately, we were driving a larger vehicle than she was. We were in a full size Dodge crew cab pick up and she was in a Nissan Sentra. She totaled our truck and we both went to the emergency ward. As fast as she was going, we could have been in the morgue if we were driving a small car. We will drive full size vehicles from now on as self defense. Jag

 

Sadly, Ford and the rest of the maker use their customers as their guinea pigs for the first model year. I bought a 1996 Taurus new off the lot. The rear struts went out at 400 miles. The windshield leaked from the get go and the dash lights loved to flicker. But heck I had an "all new for 96 design". I also bought a new Pontiac Grand Prix when they came out with the "wide track" design in the late 90's. Only problem was my car had an odd-ball alternator and when it went bad at 20k miles I couldn't get it replaced for 5 days at the local stealership. Seems only about 500 of those cars had that special alternator. And lastly, my brother bought a new 1986 Ford Taurus. That year Ford had started a new fuel connect/release system. After pulling the car into the family garage, he came in the house. 15 minutes later the house was burning down. We lost everything. Ford settled out of court with my family and issued a TSB later that year. I always wait now until the second year of a major redesign.

 

Thank you for the response Bill. I thought hand crank windows were a thing of the past. I don't know why but this info makes me feel better.

 

Well, maybe I'm just a sucker for a red truck, but I find this 2015 F150 to be a very desirable (if not affordable) truck.



And I won't have to worry about buying the first edition anyway, since that'll be this September, and I will be preparing to retire, not take on any new loans.

 

Harder to get a cheap loan with only your retirement income, Joe... Just sayin'.....

Yeah, they're pretty. I bet that one there is $40k. Think what you could do to your F-4 for half that....

 

I'll chime in tonight. I went out to the local Ford dealer in August and bought a 2013 F150 with the ecoboost. I am really impressed with the torque (420 ft-lb at 2500 RPM). It's great for towing and I'm using it as my daily driver. It is really a comfortable ride. I did negotiate it down to just over $30k during the labor day sale.

All of that being said, I wasn't too thrilled to hear that the 2015's will be aluminum. I have been working on airplanes for too long. It is hard to get paint to bond well. The metal surface has to be chemically converter (etched) to get a good bond. The best chemical for that is a chromic acid solution. Hexavalent chromium is frowned upon these days so those products are getting harder to get. I'm sure that Ford will come up with a good process at the factory, but what about all of the body shops when it's time for a repair. The body shop guys will be stuck with self etching primer....in a word, it sucks when painting aluminum. If the humidity is low when the primer is applied the phosphoric acid that is used won't fully convert. It ends up leaving conductive traces under the paint. The result is filiform corrosion. It ends up looking like a spider web of bubbled corrosion under the paint. That's my $0.02 worth.

Dan

 

Heh heh


Yeah, but it sure is purty!