True American Excess

I witnessed something this morning which illustrated the excesses of the average American. I was at the Subaru garage getting the car serviced when this couple came in complaining that their 2005 Outback had started smelling funny a couple of weeks ago. Long story short : the coolant temperature light had come on when she'd been driving and she didn't know what it was, so did nothing. As a result, the coolant pump had welded itself to the engine block because the bearings had gone, so it was no longer pumping coolant. Once it had welded itself in place, it stopped rotating, so the timing belt was skidding around it instead of turning it. The engine had been running incredibly hot - no coolant - and it's probably only because the weather hasn't been above freezing for three weeks that she didn't blow up the engine completely. Subaru reckoned in the ballpark of $4,000 to fix it - new engine basically. And this is what just made me gasp in disbelief. She turned to her husband and said: "That seems like a lot. Let's just get a new car instead," and off they went to the new car lot. It took about 50 minutes to get my car done, and by the time I drove off, they were in one of the salesman's offices doing the paperwork on a 2006 Impreza WRX.
It's just wrong on so many levels; the total retard of a husband who's just bought his wife another brand new car to destroy; the cost of a new car vs. the cost of a new engine; what are they going to do with the destroyed car? Either he has more money than brains, or they're now $40,000 more in debt because of his fuckwit wife and his pushover attitude. If that had been me the response would have been "Erm, honey, no. We're fixing this car and you are paying for the damage."

I couldn't believe what I was seeing.
Using the Hero Machine, I've mocked up how this couple appeared to me.