#reddit

Today's video of the week, presented for your afternoon amusement, shows two young men enjoying the sound of a subwoofer. Too bad that they don't know that the vibrations will set off the vehicle's airbag.

Our Saturn Vue Hybrid decided to spring another leak recently, resulting in a jammed belt tensioner and a torn CV boot. Each of the repairs started with a laundry list of required specialty tools, making improvisation and irritation a common theme over the past few days.

While last night’s repair session resolved almost all of the Vue’s issues, as midnight approached I realized there was another leaky seal which I had not purchased. I was happy to have made some progress but irritated at being unable to finish the job completely — which meant we would have to juggle cars for another day. I walked into the house, tired and angry, and went online to check out the latest on the r/JustRolledIntoTheShop subreddit while I ate a late-night snack.

JRITS is a good subreddit for reading shop and repair stories that range from funny to infuriating. I saw a few posts and comments from people who were in predicaments similar to mine, but one comment led me to a post that showed me just how insignificant my issues were and that there are still lots of generous people out there.

No-haggle pricing! It’s kind of the zombie of the auto industry. How, you ask? Well:

• Touching it makes your dealership sick
• It periodically comes back from the dead
• The nerd/geek crowd loves to talk about it
• It doesn’t actually exist

It’s also typically something that’s embraced by losers, whether the “loser” in question is a troubled dealership trying to remake its image after a complete decapitation of the leadership/ownership, a troubled brand trying to differentiate itself ( Scion), or a troubled automaker clutching at straws in the face of overwhelming competition (General Motors, with Saturn). But Lexus, the latest brand to give it a shot, doesn’t know the meaning of the word “loser”. Its lineup is bulletproof, both in terms of durability and customer perception. Its dealers are obscenely profitable and generally immune to the worst of the customer-abuse excesses for which mainline Toyota stores are justifiably famous.

So why jump on a strategy that has never, ever worked for any brand that doesn’t own the majority of its retail outlets? Perhaps the answer has something to do with Ellen Pao.

We have all been there, posing proudly with our car alongside some curvy country road on a sunny afternoon. It doesn’t matter if the car is new or old, is just going through the break-in procedure or is on its last legs, what matters is the moment. A photo like this is a powerful talisman against old age, wherever we go and whatever happens to us, we have simply to gaze upon it and we are transported back to that special time in our lives when the road was clear and the only thing we needed to be serious about was having a little fun.

An alert REDDIT reader (manuelv 19) spotted the Seattle Police Museum’s 1970 Plymouth Satellite patrol car responding to calls on the coffee scented streets of dowtown Seattle earlier this week. According to the Seattle Police Museum website, only 53 Special Order Police Satellites were produced in 1970 and 21 of those were purchased by the Seattle Police Department. The cars were mid-size police vehicles and featured the 383 Super Commando engine package complete with 4 bbl carburetors. They were reputed top be quite fast at the time.