Hammer Time: Black Friday 2010

Steven Lang
by Steven Lang

What can you do with a $20 bill these days? Lunch with a friend? Movie tickets? Perhaps a newfound garden weasel that is being sold on national TV. If you’re cheap enough, you can actually take care of your car’s routine maintenance for quite a long time. Thanks to the consumerist Christmas known as Black Friday the season to be cheap is upon us. For instance…

Pep Boys are the absolute kings of Black Friday. Last year they offered 5 quarts of API SM motor oil AND a store brand filter for $5. This time they are offering Purolator Classics, Castrol GTX, and selling the same exact package for $1 more (Limit two). If you happen drive 10k to 15k a year this may be all the oil you’ll ever need for 2011.

What about coolant? How about $1 a gallon. You can buy two of those as well. Champion spark plugs are free with the rebate and you get 16 of those. Prostop brakes which often run at $50+ for the premiums set are only $10.99. Last year I bought all the above for both our cars along with a 10 x 20 Canopy for $49 which seems to be holding up pretty well. For the Best & Brightest who are already DIY folk, you may indeed be able to keep your commuter car going for the price of lunch.

This is my short list of other good deals below or click here for a more extensive list. You also have a variety of tire deals, Amazon, Walmart, and the usual discount codes at Advance Auto Parts (up to 40% off)

Ace Hardware:

12 Volt Tire Inflator $7.99

Best Buy:

Pioneer – 50W x 4 MOSFET Apple® iPod®-Ready CD Deck with Detachable Faceplate $79.99

(Wal-mart or Amazon may have this one cheaper).

Kmart:

DieHard 10/2A Battery Charger at Kmart $22.99

(This one is an automatic charger.)

Kmart/Sears:

Plus Start Automotive Batteries – $49.98 (1 yr. replacement / 5 yr. Pro-rated)

Kmart:

Spectrum (same as SuperTech) Motor Oil – $1.39

Lowe’s:

Truck Box – $98

Menards:

12′ 10-Gauge Booster Cable – $3.99

2 Pack 8′ Ratcheting Tiedowns – $3.99

2 Ton Jack & Jack Stands – $24.99

75 Watt Inverter – $5.88

Seat Cover – $9.99

Sears:

GM Performance Parts 2-ton Jack with Stands and Creeper – $49.99

WeatherHandler 44pc Auto Safety Kit – $9.97

True Value:

300W Jump Starter – $19.97

4-Pc. Auto Floor Mats – $4.97

An other ideas?

Steven Lang
Steven Lang

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  • Jacob Jacob on Nov 23, 2010

    $79 iPod ready CD decks are not news. You can have them before and after the Black Friday week. They're a good value, as long as you don't care about the quality of the sound. Most don't have a full set of preamp output connectors and the built in amp is crap. Do not believe the numbers. That's peak watt output. This means that it will sound like crap when connected to 50 watt speakers. This particular Pioneer outputs about 14 Watts RMS power (continuous), which is actually lower than JVCs 20 watts for example at the same price. So, its sound good enough for a radio talk show, or some music, but only but a very moderate volume level.. A unit with a full set of preamp connectors will cost closer to $150, and still have a crap amplifier though, but at least you have the connectors to connect a good amp.

  • Friedclams Friedclams on Nov 24, 2010

    I'm still waiting for a ScanGuage to go on sale somewhere. Haven't found one for less than $150.

  • Kjhkjlhkjhkljh kljhjkhjklhkjh A prelude is a bad idea. There is already Acura with all the weird sport trims. This will not make back it's R&D money.
  • Analoggrotto I don't see a red car here, how blazing stupid are you people?
  • Redapple2 Love the wheels
  • Redapple2 Good luck to them. They used to make great cars. 510. 240Z, Sentra SE-R. Maxima. Frontier.
  • Joe65688619 Under Ghosn they went through the same short-term bottom-line thinking that GM did in the 80s/90s, and they have not recovered say, to their heyday in the 50s and 60s in terms of market share and innovation. Poor design decisions (a CVT in their front-wheel drive "4-Door Sports Car", model overlap in a poorly performing segment (they never needed the Altima AND the Maxima...what they needed was one vehicle with different drivetrain, including hybrid, to compete with the Accord/Camry, and decontenting their vehicles: My 2012 QX56 (I know, not a Nissan, but the same holds for the Armada) had power rear windows in the cargo area that could vent, a glass hatch on the back door that could be opened separate from the whole liftgate (in such a tall vehicle, kinda essential if you have it in a garage and want to load the trunk without having to open the garage door to make room for the lift gate), a nice driver's side folding armrest, and a few other quality-of-life details absent from my 2018 QX80. In a competitive market this attention to detai is can be the differentiator that sell cars. Now they are caught in the middle of the market, competing more with Hyundai and Kia and selling discounted vehicles near the same price points, but losing money on them. They invested also invested a lot in niche platforms. The Leaf was one of the first full EVs, but never really evolved. They misjudged the market - luxury EVs are selling, small budget models not so much. Variable compression engines offering little in terms of real-world power or tech, let a lot of complexity that is leading to higher failure rates. Aside from the Z and GT-R (low volume models), not much forced induction (whether your a fan or not, look at what Honda did with the CR-V and Acura RDX - same chassis, slap a turbo on it, make it nicer inside, and now you can sell it as a semi-premium brand with higher markup). That said, I do believe they retain the technical and engineering capability to do far better. About time management realized they need to make smarter investments and understand their markets better.
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