I bought a new car (the "I wanna be like Gugs" thread)...

[Tide In Mind Out]

So I kinda need a larger 4WD vehicle. I love the 2door Jeep thing because fuck big vehicles (honestly a 2door Jeep is big to me, I used to pilot Samurais), but once I put the wife and the 90 pound hurricanine in there, there's not much room for gear or breathing. Sure I've paired down quite a bit, but we camp primitive in the desert so extra water is a must. And that gets bulky.

Option 1: buy a truck. Cost me $20,000 used or $40,000 new. Uhh.
Option 2: trade in 2door Jeep for 4door. Probably cost me $8,000 to "upgrade" I guess.
Option 3: buy a trailer for the Jeep. Cost maybe $2,000 max or perhaps $50 on Craig's List

These ideas are still too much money. Who the fuck spends money during 2020?! Rich people. Dumb people. I am certainly not rich, and I'm working on the dumb part.

Option 4: use the Subaru station wagon to go camping, and when we get stuck on a trail, hike the rest of the way. $0 and a great campfire story.

Option $0 is the best.

There's a camping dude I watch on YouTube (Camping with Steve, Camping Steve, something like that), and he bought a 700-dollar Corrolla for camping after his SUV broke down. Good stuff.

Edit: Oops, the car was $400! Even better.

 

[NAD]

That's awesome. I love seeing regular cars on the trail. I mean yeah sometimes they get stuck but then they become part of the landscape for the next 1,000 years or so. Or maybe even part of a monument.

All that being said, my current routine of camping solo is pretty awesome. The dog hates being in a vehicle, the wife prefers sleeping in a bed, and I love being alone in the wilderness. Win-win-win!

 

[Ellestin]

I love being alone in the wilderness

Makes two of us

 

[einride]

hey i know maybe you guys should be alone in the wilderness together

 

[Ellestin]

Does together count as alone though
Gotta watch Brokeback Mountain again for clues

 

[NAD]

Brokeback Mountain is the gold standard for being alone together in the wilderness, I should watch it again as well. We'll compare notes later.

 

[rms]

That's awesome. I love seeing regular cars on the trail. I mean yeah sometimes they get stuck but then they become part of the landscape for the next 1,000 years or so. Or maybe even part of a monument.

All that being said, my current routine of camping solo is pretty awesome. The dog hates being in a vehicle, the wife prefers sleeping in a bed, and I love being alone in the wilderness. Win-win-win!

Just snuck out to montana for some of that solitude...wildfire smoke came in at the end of the trip, real bummer

 

[NAD]

Beautiful. I love Montana. Would love to live there some day. Sucks about the smoke. We are on Day 2 of blue skies after weeks of orange/gray/death/roast. So I can breathe again, but can still see flames from my backyard. Ugh.

 

[NAD]

So there's a new Jeep Wrangler coming out. Plug in hybrid that gets 50mpg. That is fucking nuts. And satisfies both my redneck/bro side and my treehugger/rainbow side.

I'm sure it will cost $40,000+ so I won't actually buy one, because that doesn't satisfy my frugal/nope side. But hey, it's cool that it will exist in this accursed modern world.

 

[dorian gray]

Sold the Mustang GT. The power is a bit absurd. There is nowhere short of a drag strip or a racetrack that one can safely utilize even the first half of the tachometer. If a fun car is so fun that you can’t even enjoy the fun does that make it a boring car?
Further, I didn’t want to be associated with your typical muscle car owner. I don’t care what people think of me but for my own mind, it just bothered me. It was like being appalled at my own bad taste.

 

[Krilons Resa]

Still sporting my 2008 Honda Accord V6 EX-L. Like every car I have owned, I'm gonna ride it til the wheels fall off or I crash it; whichever comes first.

 

[NAD]

Sold the Mustang GT.

Peak Dorian is OVER.

 

[dorian gray]

It was short-lived

 

[SonOfNun]

Still sporting my 2008 Honda Accord V6 EX-L. Like every car I have owned, I'm gonna ride it til the wheels fall off or I crash it; whichever comes first.

I'm driving a 2002 Chevy Silverado and I didn't have a driver's license until 2004

 

[NAD]

I drove this 1968 Jeep CJ-5 a few weeks ago and it made my 2012 Jeep Wrangler feel like a 1997 Cadillac Catera.

 

[einride]

Further, I didn’t want to be associated with your typical muscle car owner.

if you think that's bad, apparently i'm a lesbian now (since i bought a subaru forester without knowing the implications)

 

[Krilons Resa]

if you think that's bad, apparently i'm a lesbian now (since i bought a subaru forester without knowing the implications)

under the pretense that it was manly af.

 

[NAD]

Subaru Rights?

 

[dorian gray]

Lol Erik! Did you forget about when Adrian and I both had Subaru wagons?

 

[NAD]

How do you advertise a car that journalists describe as “sturdy, if drab”?

That was the question faced by Subaru of America executives in the 1990s. After the company’s attempts to reinvigorate sales—by releasing its first luxury car and hiring a hip ad agency to introduce it to the public—failed, it changed its approach. Rather than fight larger car companies over the same demographic of white, 18-to-35-year-olds living in the suburbs, executives decided to market their cars to niche groups—such as outdoorsy types who liked that Subarus could handle dirt roads.

In the 1990s, Subaru’s unique selling point was that the company increasingly made all-wheel drive standard on all its cars. When the company’s marketers went searching for people willing to pay a premium for all-wheel drive, they identified four core groups who were responsible for half of the company’s American sales: teachers and educators, health-care professionals, IT professionals, and outdoorsy types.

Then they discovered a fifth: lesbians. “When we did the research, we found pockets of the country like Northampton, Massachusetts, and Portland, Oregon, where the head of the household would be a single person—and often a woman,” says Tim Bennett, who was the company’s director of advertising at the time. When marketers talked to these customers, they realized these women buying Subarus were lesbian.

“There was such an alignment of feeling, like [Subaru cars] fit with what they did,” says Paul Poux, who later conducted focus groups for Subaru. The marketers found that lesbian Subaru owners liked that the cars were good for outdoor trips, and that they were good for hauling stuff without being as large as a truck or SUV. “They felt it fit them and wasn’t too flashy,” says Poux.

Subaru’s strategy called for targeting these five core groups and creating ads based on its appeal to each. For medical professionals, it was that a Subaru with all-wheel drive could get them to the hospital in any weather conditions. For rugged individualists, it was that a Subaru could handle dirt roads and haul gear. For lesbians, it was that a Subaru fit their active, low-key lifestyle.

I maintain an active, low-key lifestyle. I am a Lesbian Subaru Driver.