The Kind Of Person Who Buys A Discontinued Car: COTD

Every January, the manufacturers that make up the auto, moto, and RV industries publish their sales data to let you know how well the year went for them. Some things remain constant, like the fact that America buys a mind-boggling number of pickup trucks each year. Ford sold 750,789 F-Series trucks in 2023. That’s 2,056 trucks a day, 85 trucks an hour, or roughly 3 trucks every two minutes. It seems unbelievable, but I have to believe it because I’m looking right at it. On the other end of the spectrum, you have the low sales numbers for cars that were discontinued a year or longer ago, and those are just as interesting.

Last year, three Chrysler 200s found happy homes, two Dodge Vipers found owners to enjoy their V10 goodness, and just one person managed to find an unsold Jeep Patriot. To not make this entirely about discontinued Mopars, five Acuras NSX went into garages last year, too!

But who buys a discontinued car? The Dodge Viper and the Acura NSX make sense. While neither of those two were popular, they still have a strong fanbase. Maybe the Patriot was sold with a ridiculous discount?

EmotionalSupportBMW has an idea with this COTD-winning Dungeons & Dragons quest:

Five brave adventurers have finally completed the dungeon below Wolf Chrysler Dodge Ram Jeep in Ogallala, Nebraska. After defeating Glorious Defiler Ghost of Jurgen E. Schrempp. Our five heros roll for their reward. The healer takes low roll and receives a new Chrysler 200. The DPS/off tank warrior receives the other. The tank, who is now getting divorced due to this raid, gets the new Jeep Liberty. The Wizard who spammed fireball the entire time, and the Archer spamming arrows from 40 yards away both received new Vipers. These all counted as new sales in Q4, as the dungeon was hiding by the developers.

In case you didn’t know, Jürgen E. Schrempp was the CEO of Daimler-Benz from 1995 to 2005. Data also got a good giggle out of me because this bit about David’s awesome wrenching escapades is so accurate:

David Tracy Mad Libs
I have _____ days/weeks/months to repair this _____ for a trip to _____. I’m screwed.

Then David always succeeds like the A-Team. He loves it when a plan comes together. The success of Project Cactus proves anything is possible. Maybe you can import some of the Cactus Aussies for an assist.

I think a Mad Libs for me would be: I Bought A _____ From A _____ And It’s Already Broken Because _____, But I love it.

Finally, Michael Beranek made me spit out my orange juice with this line about buying car engines from department store catalogs:

I ordered one of those 632 big blocks from Amazon, but some damn porch pirate made off with it.

Have a great evening, everyone!