I can agree with most of those. I don't recall the five year rule though. I remember when I lived there the cars I had were well over five years old. Maybe American Soldiers are exempt from that rule, I don't know, but I do know that the cars I had (four Opel's and a BMW) had to pass their stringent inspections, which I have no problem with at all. Just because a vehicle is over five years old does not mean it is not a good vehicle. Case it point; My truck is 7 years old and, as I stated earlier, looks and runs like it is new. My step-father has a truck that is 10 years old, has over 200K miles on it and still pulls his 32' trailer with no problem at all. Sure it has a couple of leaks, but he uses his trucks as trucks. And the leaks are not hard to fix, they are just not high on his list of priorities, and they don't sit there and drip in front of your eyes. They seep a bit.
What they really need to do is force inspectors here in the US to quit taking bribes to get cars to pass. I know this happens because I have seen it first hand. I can't tell you how many times I have had my vent/AC/heater on (I don't have the option of recirculating the air, only outside air) and followed a car that was belching blue smoke and I had to turn off my vent because the smell was overwhelming. To me these illegal vehicles are far worse than my soot producing diesel truck. Another thing is reliability. The reason I have a seven year old truck is because it has the 7.3L engine that Ford phased out several years ago. The new engines, although cleaner, are far less reliable than the one I have. This is also the reason that I am planning on keeping this truck for many years. If I need a new engine and the chassis is in good shape, I can get a brand new crate engine installed for about 5K, a hell of a lot cheaper than spending over 60K for the newer trucks that have the same features/options as mine (I have the F-250 Lariat, which is now called the King Ranch edition). Bruce Gruss Gott wrote: (Although I am in favor of vehicle laws such as Germany has: no cars over 5 years old without a special permit; no rust, no bald tires, no broken suspension, etc. If we did that we would save billions per year) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Create robust enterprise, web RIAs. Upgrade to ColdFusion 8 and integrate with Adobe Flex http://www.adobe.com/products/coldfusion/flex2/?sdid=RVJP Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:247653 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
