Originally Posted by extrashaky
Bought not built yo.
I'm accustomed to the XJ and FSJ communities, where spending time in a bone yard and doing your own work is just sort of expected. I never paid much attention to the Wrangler crowd until I joined the local "Jeep" group. It's a whole different culture. They talk a lot about their "builds," which basically means having a local shop sell them a lift, bumpers, Fuel rims that would make Liberace proud with skinny bands of rubber that are useless anywhere but pavement, a winch and a stupid-looking angry grille, all installed by techs who are laughing at how much money they're making off these posers. Then they whine about how nobody is giving them The Jeep Wave™ the way it shows in the Fiat marketing videos.
In my area what the posers do is finance $30K to $40K on a Wrangler, then take it to a 4x4 shop and spend an additional $15K to $20K on lift, rims, tires, fenders, bumpers, winches, roof racks, sway bar disconnects they never actually disconnect, axles, angry grilles, half doors, windows for the half doors to make them full doors again, foot pegs so they can ride with their legs hanging out, sound bars, designer sunglasses, angrier grilles, rock lights (basically ricer ground effect lighting pretending to have a purpose), recovery boards they use once when they realize they bought the wrong tires for driving on the beach, decals ("It's a Jeep thing, you wouldn't understand" or "˙ɹǝʌo ǝɯ dᴉlɟ 'sᴉɥʇ pɐǝɹ uɐɔ noʎ ɟI"), lettering for the Jeep's name on the hood (because these idiots actually name their vehicles and talk to them like pets), super angry grilles that are so mad they look like fanged skulls, cutesy license plate frames ("ɯǝlqoɹԀ" "No Problem"), multiple tops and a hoist for the hard top that screws up the ceiling in their townhouse garage. Then, inexplicably, they top off the bill with shitty sub-$100 Flowmaster mufflers and go cruise the causeway on Wednesday nights to show off how much money they have, as reflected by their "build."
Then they get all butthurt when someone makes fun of their poser culture.
Not after inflation. For regular production cars, you generally have to keep them 40 to 50 years before you break even on maintenance, storage and inflation.
Also, "special edition" cars don't hold their value better than the mainstream version unless there's a significant power bump as part of the package. For example, a 2001 "Freedom Edition" Jeep Cherokee is not worth more than any other Cherokee from that year, because it was basically the same Jeep with some stickers. In contrast, a Chrysler 300C will hold its value much better than a regular 300 because it has an SRT Hemi in it. Big brakes or a special paint color are not going to make any difference in the value of a BRZ or FR-S.
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