Not a Mirage

1998 Suzuki Wagon R FX-T

(This listing is from Cars & Bids.)

One of the great sins of modern capitalism is that it creates an incentive structure where Mitsubishi is allowed to have a business model built around Mirages at $20,000 a piece across the street from Nissan over there turning bad credit into worse sedans with (relative) impunity.

All of this plays out against the backdrop of the rest of the world, where in exchange for a couple of minor-to-severe import headaches, you could be driving something 1000 percent cooler and 80 percent as functional for less than the front-loaded finance costs on that Altima that’s had more repossessions than oil changes.

The good news with this particular vehicle is that some other sucker has already dealt with the import headaches, meaning that your biggest challenges become navigating fast food drive-throughs from the right-hand seat and having to explain to your insurance agent what you’ve done as they insist that this isn’t showing up under their “Suzuki” dropdown. (They’ll figure it out the premium is going to be about $11 when they do.)

So for less than the down payment on whatever lame Civic or incomprehensible Subaru/Toyota collaboration/abomination you might have convinced yourself is the most pragmatic way to get back and forth to work or whatever, you could be driving an eye-catching, head-turning delight that has more personality in its cartoonish headlights than your last car did in its whole depressing existence.

There’s not that much more to say about this one. Normalize buying weird shit from Japan.