Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

Marketing on Youtube

A pain point for us car guys is finding a trustworthy shop. Now obviously the dealership is the prime option. And if they screw up, you can always complain to the manufacturer. But for those of us not made of money, we’d like something a little less costly. After the initial warranty period is over, of course.

I think a good way for auto shops to advertise their quality is to start a Youtube channel. Putting it on video will show potential customers what to expect. Are the mechanics knowledgeable? Are jobs done in a timely manner? Is there excellent attention to detail? Think of it as marketing cost. Pay an intern minimum wage to produce videos. The cinematography doesn’t matter as much as being able to show what the shop is capable of.

For example: after watching a few videos of Tyrrell’s Classic Workshop, I can judge the quality of their work to be the highest. If in another multiverse I was endowed with the monetary ability to buy expensive classic cars, I would readily commission Iain Tyrrell Classic Cars to perform maintenance work.

With my BMW M2 nearing its end of dealership service plans (first three years were free, then I bought two more years), I will be looking for an independent shop to continue the car’s maintenance sometime next year. In lieu of running into a local BMW shop’s Youtube videos on the algorithm, I will have to troll the BMW forums on where the local owners prefer to take their cars to.

Ideally, I would have the space and do the maintenance myself. However, as we know, none of us live in the ideal world.

Gamble to rumble

One of my frequent YouTube channels is Tyrrell's Classic Workshop. The latest video shows the proprietor going over to Paris, France for a car auction. In that very car auction is a Ferrari 250 LM that sold for 28 million euros. An unfathomably large sum - to spend on a single car - for a broke person with meager means like myself.

A tremendous amount of money for a thing that will largely sit in an air-conditioned garage for many years. Until the next supremely rich car guy pays even more for it. Heck, the buyer might not even have to pay taxes if the car is stored in a free port. Vintage Ferrari race cars: the only time a car is an “investment”. Your paint-to-sample Porsche 911, sadly, is not. That money is better thrown into an S&P 500 fund.

The pain from being a broke car guy is that I don’t have the means to sample the variety of cars out there. I can only do so in the virtual world of Gran Turismo (the only way I can “own” and “drive” a Ferrari). A large garage full of automobiles is not in the cards for me, in this life time. I’d have to first afford a garage.

Then there are cars that’s wholly out of my income range. As a former owner of a 2015 Porsche 911 GT3, I currently cannot afford a 2025 Porsche 911 GT3. The starting MSRP has ballooned from $125,000 to $200,000. My incomes has not kept up with that inflation. And that’s before ticking a single option box, and paying extortion money to the selling dealership.

I can see why people gamble their whole money into specific stock options and/or crypto. There are so many nice things out there (it’s not only cars) that if we can just get a huge sum of money very quickly, we’d be able to buy and enjoy them all. They don’t want to wait the many decades in working hard and accumulating wealth slowly. Because a 911 GT3 won’t be brand new on sale for that much longer.

In lieu of getting extremely lucky in a gamble - not that I would in the first place, I hugely temper my expectations.

Fixing a puncture

As a car enthusiast, it’s always satisfying to work on your own car. You know for sure that the job will be done correctly, and any mistake made you have nobody to blame but yourself. It sure beats making an appointment at a car shop, only to wait the entire day (if not more) to get your car back. (How long does it take to perform an oil change, honestly?) Never mind the fact shop labor rates have inflated just like everything else.

DIY whenever you can to save some money.

I drew an unlucky straw recently and got a puncture on the passenger front tire. No big deal, I’ve all the tools to plug a tire, provided it’s right on the tread surface (it was). On the BMW M2 it was my first time removing a wheel fastened on by lug bolts (instead of the lug nuts). The bolts came out easy enough, but the wheel was sort of seized onto the hub. Apparently this is a thing with BMW wheels. I’m fortunate to live in a mild climate, so a few hard wiggle of the wheel did the trick to loosen it.

The problem with lug bolts is when it comes time to put the wheel back on. On a car with wheel studs it’s super easy to align the bolt pattern. With no protruding studs of any kind on the M2, I have to masterfully cradle wheel whilst in a squat position, then carefully turn it to align the bolt holes. I should have done some Googling before this job, because apparently they sell an alignment pin to make this as effortless as wheel studs. Hopefully it goes on sale for Black Friday…

Those of us who lift weights consistently do so for the aesthetic appeal. Anybody that tells you otherwise is probably lying. Another aim for my resistance training is to be functionally strong. I insist on doing overhead pressing because holding a heavy weight above your head is a primary movement in everyday life. I squat so that I can be in a squat position comfortably for over an hour while fixing a tire puncture. I deadlift, so that I can hand-hold an over 40 pound wheel and tire for multiple minutes.

There’s really no downsides to weight lifting, other than the time commitment. And the soreness afterwards.

Waning enthusiasm

I guess gas prices (in the San Francisco Bay Area) is just going to stay in the five dollars per gallon threshold? We’re never going to see the number 3 again in front of the decimal point are we? Unless of course we move to other parts of the country where not only do they have cheaper gas than California, but they also have higher octane! (93 versus 91.) If I’m getting reamed in the butt on petrol price, at least give me the best gasoline possible.

It’s a good thing then that I’ve only driven 4,000 miles since the previous September. Paying over $70 to fill up the BMW M2 is so not the business. As much as I like driving, the cost of gas adds up very quickly. At least that is something I can control. The higher insurance premiums that we all received in our last renewals? Nothing I can do about that.

Perhaps my car enthusiasm is waning? I don’t know. I took the M2 in to the dealership for service last week, and I keep thinking what a hassle it is. Even though I’m not removing a single bolt myself, it’s still time out of my day to drive it to the dealership (on the other side of the city). Imagine if I didn’t own a car at all - how much simpler it would be. No gas price shocks, no insurance premiums, no maintenance costs, no worries about parking it somewhere and risking some asshole damaging the car.

Of course, it’s not tenable to not have a car. I rely too much on Costco trips to fight the ongoing inflation. But I’m thinking maybe I don’t need to own a high-strung sports car. It would be cheaper and less stressful to instead own a car an old man would drive. Something boring, something dead nuts reliable. That can only mean one thing: a Toyota.

Change is the only constant, right? I’ve like cars since I was a kid. Who knows, maybe that enthusiasm does come to an end.

First time?

BMW drivers have the infamous reputation of being assholes on the road. We completely disregard proper road manners. Turn signals? What are those? Add to that the magnificently instant power of electric motors, and the asshole intensifies even more…

I recently took my BMW M2 to the dealer for its annual service. For loaner vehicle I was given a BMW i5 - an all-electric BMW 5 Series. It’s the first time I’ve ever driven an electric car, never mind that it’s my first service loaner to not be powered by dinosaur juice. I was instantly a fan: unlike a gas loaner where I have to refill the amount I use, for an EV loaner there’s no expectation of charging back to the initial level! As a fan of decreasing the amount of hassles in my life, this development is lovely.

Back to the BMW i5. The instant torque of electric motors is indeed very intoxicating. No naturally-aspirated gas engine can match the response of an electric motor. With such accessible power, electric cars invite drivers to be aggressive. It’s too easy! Anybody that’s in front of you can be passed in an eye blink. Any gap in traffic can be filled before other drivers can react. Even for me, someone who prefers to do the speed limit in the slow lane, the i5 loaner egged me to test out its capabilities. The fastest car in the world is a rental EV.

Not that I wasn’t of this opinion before, but having driven an EV finally, I am more convinced that you should absolutely buy electric if you are able to charge it at home. The power is nice, yes, but so is the negligible maintenance cost (brakes and tires, mostly). And if you believe in the whole better-for-the-environment mission (let’s skip over the mining materials for the batteries part), even better.

If I actually had a commute, I wouldn’t look at anything but an all-electric car.

It's just a car

I find that I am far calmer when I am driving not my own car. That is not to say I am more careless when driving other people’s cars. I still drive defensively, and avoid the assholes on the road as best possible. (Because the best way to win a fight is to not get in one in the first place.) But for some reason, I am more amped up when I am driving my BMW M2. It’s skin in the game: when the car is bought with your own money, you are wont to stress more about its condition.

Conversely, when something is borrowed, people tend to treat it worse. The fastest car in the world is a rental car. At my workplace, you should see the state of some of the laptops we get in return from users. They treat the computers with utter carelessness. I want to say they wouldn’t treat their own laptops like that, but I have to wonder. How a person do anything is how they do everything.

I have to say, it is nice to drive around with less stress. Perhaps I should lease a new car every three years, though that is a hefty price to pay for a slight increase in peace of mind on the road. Not sure about that one.

Because outside of rent, the automobile is our second largest expense. Spending unnecessarily high on cars is how people fall behind in personal finances. I would know. People talk of cutting back on the three dollar daily coffee (it’s probably six dollars now with inflation) in order to get ahead, and it is stupid. The much bigger lever is the car. You can have all the Starbucks you want when you are not spending hundreds (even thousand) of dollars on transportation per month.

You know what also would lower my stress while driving my own car? Not owning such a “nice” car in the first place. I might as well turn in my car enthusiast card in now…

In case of emergency

The problem with modern cars is that they don’t come with spare tires. My BMW M2 certainly does not have one. In its trunk space where a spare is suppose to be, there’s the 12-volt battery (because race car), and a can of tire goo. There’s no emergency jack, or a lug wrench to take off the wheels. In the event of a puncture, I would hook that can to the faulty tire’s valve stem, and the goo is suppose to fill up the tire’s innards. Doing so is suppose to buy me just enough time and mileage to get the car to a tire repair shop.

Oh by the way, the punctured tire that I just filled with goo? It’s irreplaceable. Even if the offending hole is otherwise small enough to be patched. I guess BMW really expect its owners to have the income to replace a $300 tire (if you don’t cheap out, that is) without it hurting. Don’t forget: for balance, you typically should replace the other tire on the same axle as well. That’s $600 in potential repair simply because of a tiny piece of sharp object on the road surface. It’s either that, or call a tow truck. (Presumably, being left stranded on the side of the road is not a choosable option.)

I went with a third option: making and packing my own emergency tire kit. The consensus on the best scissor jack for BMW cars is this $25 unit from Harbor Freight. The head fits into BMW jacking points perfectly. Also from Harbor Freight is this heavy duty tire repair kit. It has everything: plier to extract the foreign object, reamer to prepare the hole, insertion tool for the rubber plugs, and a blade to cut off the excess. The $22 it costs is vastly cheaper than replacing an entire tire. You hate on Made in China until you have to pay for Made in the USA prices.

Lastly, I bought this lug wrench from Amazon. It’s got the necessary 17mm socket for BMW lug bolts. With these three tools packed in the M2’s trunk, I can tackle any puncture during road trips, short of something catastrophic. (That can of goo isn’t going to do much for a hole that size, either.) Best of all, I can take these tools with me to whatever my next car would be. Because it’s very likely that will also not have a spare tire or emergency tools.