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Used car market gets even more bizarre

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111–120 of 340 posts

Re: Used car market gets even more bizarre

#111

Might their be some need to legislate chip allocation? What would sink GDP more: one year of no new cars, or one year of no new phones? Which would have the greater domino effect on the economy? Because auto manufacturers are such low margin, they can't buy chips reserved by monopoly businesses. But what happens when people can't afford a new phone because they can't get to work?

I'm not sure that would help at all; the issue isn't that Apple used up all the capacity, it's that the auto makers scaled down a process that needs months to scale up.

Re: Used car market gets even more bizarre

#112

I bought a 2009 4Runner back in March for $15k. Back then $15k would buy you the nicest 4th Generation (03-09) 4Runner. Now days that seems to be the average asking price, most 4Runners from that generation are going for at least $12k (with over 200k miles) and the nicest ones (with low 100k miles) are fetching over $20k. That's 15k to 20k for a car that is 11 years old at it's youngest and mileage under 150k is cons…

09 Accord with 70k miles, bought in 2012 for 15k. Appraised in September 2021 at $6800 at Carmax and then sold to them in November 2021 for $7900. Dealership had offered $5000 for it in 2020.

Re: Used car market gets even more bizarre

#113

All I can offer is an anecdote. I have a 2015 Mazda 3 (top trim level, with 34,000 miles on it.) Purchased 4.5 years ago with 8k on it for just under $20k. Well over a year ago, I started checking KBB.com values to either trade it in or sell it. Back then, trade was close to $12k, and private party was a bit over $13k. I've checked several times since then, and the price has basically grown and grown. As of today, it…

What would you do after selling? Go by foot? Or buy another car at similarly inflated prices?

Re: Used car market gets even more bizarre

#114
I bought a new car in 2019 and it has about 10,000 miles on it. I could sell it for what I paid for it, which is completely absurd. If I knew I’d be able to buy another car in ~6 months, I’d sell it in a second. But the auto industry backlog is looking more like 12-18 months to me.

Re: Used car market gets even more bizarre

#115

All I can offer is an anecdote. I have a 2015 Mazda 3 (top trim level, with 34,000 miles on it.) Purchased 4.5 years ago with 8k on it for just under $20k. Well over a year ago, I started checking KBB.com values to either trade it in or sell it. Back then, trade was close to $12k, and private party was a bit over $13k. I've checked several times since then, and the price has basically grown and grown. As of today, it…

What would you do after selling? Go by foot? Or buy another car at similarly inflated prices?

As I hinted, I work from home, as does my spouse. We could share her car, as we often do now. My car is just a luxury/convenience item at this point, not a necessity.

(Though I have an irrational desire to eventually get a truck to help with my chores around the property. But no rush on that.)

Re: Used car market gets even more bizarre

#116

All I can offer is an anecdote. I have a 2015 Mazda 3 (top trim level, with 34,000 miles on it.) Purchased 4.5 years ago with 8k on it for just under $20k. Well over a year ago, I started checking KBB.com values to either trade it in or sell it. Back then, trade was close to $12k, and private party was a bit over $13k. I've checked several times since then, and the price has basically grown and grown. As of today, it…

What would you do after selling? Go by foot? Or buy another car at similarly inflated prices?

They said themselves that they don't really need the car anyways. Is walking (or bicycling) to places really such a foreign concept to so many people?

Re: Used car market gets even more bizarre

#117
post #114

I bought a new car in 2019 and it has about 10,000 miles on it. I could sell it for what I paid for it, which is completely absurd. If I knew I’d be able to buy another car in ~6 months, I’d sell it in a second. But the auto industry backlog is looking more like 12-18 months to me.

These are micro-optimizations that aren't very meaningful.

It's more important to simply just have a car, than it is to have a car for a very specific price.

It's the same reason why people would pay $12 at an airport for what they could get in bulk for $0.50

Re: Used car market gets even more bizarre

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That message does nice double duty as a PC way of saying poors need not bother shopping him for a quote to replace something on their '99 Grand Caravan.

IIUC, you're implying that that mechanic is disdainful of poor customers, and that this just provides convenient political cover. If so, I'm not sure why you'd assume that. It seems more likely to me that the mechanic is simply choosing his work based on personal interest and perhaps profitability. I don't see why we'd ask anything more than that from him.

I'm not assuming. Everyone even remotely close to the industry knows that mechanics don't like the people who want to do the bare minimum amount of work all the time and that fairly strongly correlates to "poors". Of course given the choice a mechanic would rather do an oil change on a '15 4Runner owned by some yuppie he can upsell a cabin air filter to than do a timing set on a '03 Outback for someone who'll decline the water pump that they traditionally try and sell with it.

Re: Used car market gets even more bizarre

#119

I bought a 2009 4Runner back in March for $15k. Back then $15k would buy you the nicest 4th Generation (03-09) 4Runner. Now days that seems to be the average asking price, most 4Runners from that generation are going for at least $12k (with over 200k miles) and the nicest ones (with low 100k miles) are fetching over $20k. That's 15k to 20k for a car that is 11 years old at it's youngest and mileage under 150k is cons…

I found a 2008 4Runner v6 engine with 4 wheel drive some years back. People ask me all the time to sell and I never will because that platform is so solid.

Re: Used car market gets even more bizarre

#120
post #66
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NA Miatas are becoming rarer, especially if yours is not modified to hell and back. And collector car prices have been climbing a lot recently.

Sure, but mine is a ~350k mile piece of shit with a salvage title after someone T-boned it at low speed, and I haven't made any real attempt to repair that damage. Nobody in their right mind looks at my Miata and thinks "collector car!"

No rust? In todays Miata market? 3k.

Back in 2016, 3k was a clean sub 100k mi Miata

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