David Thomas: “Actually, I was off doing other work; but in listening to this debate on the floor, I thought that perhaps someone ought…”

“Actually, I was off doing other work; but in listening to this debate on the floor, I thought that perhaps someone ought to come to the floor who as an avocation understands something about cars, since this discussion was fairly obvious to anyone who understands anything about cars that some of the folks who were carrying on the discussion knew nothing about them. First of all, in today's passenger market if, in fact, you have a separate chassis you are almost always talking about a truck, you are not talking about a car. Cars tend to be unibody or just have a subassembly which is up front. The gentleman used an example of a 1990 BMW 325. That is probably a 325-I, which is their small car, that at 7,075 is a typical price for that car. I would tell the gentleman if that car, according to an insurance company, was totaled, if you wanted to talk about the front end, your radiator would be about $300, your subsuspension, just the lower A arm is $194. I know. I just bought one about 2 months ago for my daughter's car. You begin adding up the bumper pieces and the rest, you will have spent $3,000 to $4,000 on a relatively minor 20-mile-per-hour wreck.”