[Motor City MadMan]

As far as the guy cashing in his 401K to pay for this think again. These electricians in auto plants are typically overtime hogs. A lot of them work 7 days a week and with all the overtime, double time on Sundays, triple time on holidays, profit sharing etc, etc they can make around $150,000 a year. Not bad for putting in only about 15 minutes of real actual work a day. They typically sit around and read magazines or whatever while waiting for the boss to call them and tell them a line is down somewhere once an hour. They go over to some control panel, hit a few buttons, the line starts running again and they sit down for another hour or so. Or they troll the garbage cans looking for aluminum cans so they can collect the 10 cent deposit on them. They don't call it the UAW for nothing. UAW stands for "U Aint Workin". Then they put in 40 years, retire, and drop dead a year later and the wife gets all the cash. That's typically how it goes.

Considering a lot of these guys are at work all the time, 7 days a week, and don't have time to spend their money I wouldn't be surprised if this guy paid cash for the car. I knew a lot of guys like this at the auto plants. This guy fits the common profile. He could have retired with a full retirement at 30 years, but he has been there 37 years now. The story says the car is 3X what he paid for his house, but he probably bought the house 35 years ago right after he started working for GM. So it's not like the house is only worth $60,000 today. He works the 3rd shift, but with his seniority could easily go on 1st shift. The only reason he is on 3rd shift is probably so he makes another 5-10% for shift premiums. He'll either die on the job or a few years after retirement with a few million in the bank. He probably has stocked his money away like a squirrel his whole life and not spent much of it. But, then again some of the skilled trades guys at the plant did spend their money conspicuously on expensive boats and cars.