Car shopping

For me, car shopping requires a lot of data. How big are they, how much do they cost, what fuel consumption are we looking at?

With my car donated and our other car on it's last go-round at 202 thousand miles, we are shopping. Here is data I collected from edmunds and cars.com on the our top choices.


Capacity (all seat 5):
Car     L    W    IntVol  CargoVol (cubic fee)
-----  ---  ---   -----    ------
V70    186   71    135      33.3
CR-V   179   72    103      37.2
Golf   165   70    105      12.2
Jetta  179   70    125      32.8


MPG/Power/Range
Car      Year  City  Hwy  HP/TQ    Range
-------  ----  ----  ---  -------  ------
v70       01    17   24   168/170  400/527
CR-V 2wd  12    23   31   185/163  351/470
CR-V 4wd  12    22   30   185/163  336/459
Golf      11    30   42   140/236  435/609 (same for '12 and '10)
Jetta     11    29   39   140/236  420/565 (same for '12)

Prices (current advertised prices on cars.com)
           year/miles/price (miles and price in thousands)
v70        04/80/11, 06/54/17, 08/44/20, 10/54/24
CR-V 2wd   07/46/16, 09/57/17, 10/44/21, 11/17/22, 12/13/21
CR-V 4wd   04/56/15, 07/40/22, 10/24/26, 11/20/21, 
Golf       11/5 /20, 11/41/23, 12/14/25, 13/7 /24
Jetta      10/25/24, 12/--/25, 13/12/28

After driving all but the CR-V and based on the data I offer: 

The 2 wheel drive CR-V gets very good gas mileage and has more cargo room than our current car. And it is 7 inches shorter! It is also more reliable than VW. However, VW gets better gas mileage by far. These also have near-luxury interiors and much better handling than the CR-V. The jetta is more car than the golf, but is also more expensive. A newer v70 is also an option as there are some to be had with "low" miles at good prices.

Time to make a choice...

5 guys do it right

You've heard the expression, to be successful, take one thing and do it right. 5 Guys Burgers do just that.

Great story about a family owned business with smart management and great decisions from the start.

Hats off to them.

What is the correct value for the DOW today?

The DOW closed at a 6 year low today. I wonder, what is the "proper" value for the dow.

Look at the full history:



I drew a green line representing the average value over the years. It seems that 10000 is right.

Wait, that is a logarithmic scale. What about a linear scale? Here it is with the same green line.



Looking at this the "right" value today is only just over 2000. That is a scary number.

How low do you think it will get?

From Aug. 1929 to July 1932, the DOW went from 377 to 41, down about 9 times. In Oct. 2007 the DOW was at 14093, 9 times lower puts the DOW at 1566.

Could it go that low?

I don't know. What do you think?