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Used car market gets even more bizarre

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Re: Used car market gets even more bizarre

#131

Post by Wistar »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #13
clavalle wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in the same boat. I usually avoid buying new but used cars are nearly the same price as new (if you can find a dealer that hasn't done ridiculous 'market adjustments'). So we bought new. We had to buy a car that was just off the delivery truck before the dealership had it inspected. The one we'd looked at two days before was long gone and they expected the one we bought to be sold the next day. My neighbor trad…

>Mechanics are about to make a killing. If you're a mechanic and already have plenty of business, I imagine it's a tough call: do you jack up your hourly rates and take advantage of the windfall, at the risk of customer loyalty in the future? This insanity will pass, after all.

A friend owns a high line/niche used car dealership and his service shop, who has a legendary mechanic, has not increased rates at all but just got more selective about the service work they are doing. Also, effectively no new service customers as they are booked solid for months.

Re: Used car market gets even more bizarre

#133

Post by speeder »

Anything that depends on Silicon right now is heavily warped.

For example my GPU used is seemly now more valuable than I paid for it new, I will soon attempt to sell it.

Meanwhile new GPUs area crazy expensive too, people like to blame miners but even GPUs terrible for mining are crazy expensive, I actually then considered mining to pay a new GPU, only to find out that mining is not being too profitable either, the most profitable GPU I could find visiting mining calculators would be whatever one in my country would take me 2 YEARS to pay off, so I doubt miners are actually that hot for GPUs...

I also need a SSD ( don't have any, I still use HDDs), found out my mobo has poor suport for one.

Calculated price for new computer assembled from parts, found out it is not even POSSIBLE to build one, a lot of parts are 100% out of stock, for example every single website I entered has mobos with AMD X570 chipsets sold out, sound cards, even crap 5 USD ones to plug on USB? sold out. SSDs bigger than 500gb? Sold out. GPUs? Mostly sold out excepting really crap ones (those tiny boards that fit in a 1x slot) or really good ones (those that cost as much as a motorcycle).

CPUs? A bunch of them sold out too, one I actually saw with plenty of stock is EPYC 7742 that has the same price as a SUV here O.o (I am not even sure what someone would use that CPU for... seriously what you do with 128 threads???)

Also my wife wanted a TV (we didn't had one, we were using a borrowed one). We visited a lot of stores before we found one in stock, and when we found it and purchased it, it triggered multiple stores from the same franchise to start to angrily message each other arguing about who should have the last pieces in their storefront...

Re: Used car market gets even more bizarre

#134

Post by jjav »

pengaru wrote: post #45

I daily drive a beater NA Miata, and throughout the past year or so I keep getting harassed to sell it. In the parking lots of grocery stores, post office, home depot, you name it and someone has literally camped out waiting for me to return just so they can try pressure me to sell, often quite rudely too. From my perspective it's pretty crazy, the car appears neglected with a very rough exterior... it doesn't scream…

Two years ago you could go to craigslist and search for Miata and get a hundred cars for sale any day.

Today, hard to find a reasonable one.

Re: Used car market gets even more bizarre

#135

Post by traceddd »

speeder wrote: post #133

Anything that depends on Silicon right now is heavily warped. For example my GPU used is seemly now more valuable than I paid for it new, I will soon attempt to sell it. Meanwhile new GPUs area crazy expensive too, people like to blame miners but even GPUs terrible for mining are crazy expensive, I actually then considered mining to pay a new GPU, only to find out that mining is not being too profitable either, the m…

I agree it’s shortages and not really miners to primarily blame for the GPU issues… but the type of mining you are doing is not the same as professional miners. There is tons of demand.

Re: Used car market gets even more bizarre

#136

Post by hyperman1 »

noduerme wrote: post #129
NDizzle wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will the insanity pass, though? There's talk of putting cameras in all cars starting in 2026 to prevent... drunk driving[1]?! What's next? I can't be alone in never buying a car that has this feature. [1] https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-11-09/congre...

I still won't even buy a car with GPS. Seems I'm in a vanishing minority. It won't pass, because people born after 1990 have spent their adult lives in a world with surveillance machines in their pockets at all times. Their cars are just big phones. By 2040 you probably won't even be allowed to drive your own vehicle.

To be honest, not being allowed to drive your own vehicle is probably a good thing.

See e.g. https://www.cdc.gov/injury/features/global-road-safety/index.... From the first few paragraphs:

  Road traffic crashes are a leading cause of death in the United States for people aged 1–54     

  More than half of those killed are pedestrians, motorcyclists, or cyclists.
Drivers risk other people's lives, hence, other people have a right to demand safety from drivers' actions. Supposing computers do get better than humans in the future, why not just stop humans from doing this dangerous activity?

If someone wants to do some old school driving in 2040, go have fun on a private racetrack or whatever. You can even ignore speed limits.

Re: Used car market gets even more bizarre

#137

Post by SilasX »

jiveturkey wrote: post #72
clavalle wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in the same boat. I usually avoid buying new but used cars are nearly the same price as new (if you can find a dealer that hasn't done ridiculous 'market adjustments'). So we bought new. We had to buy a car that was just off the delivery truck before the dealership had it inspected. The one we'd looked at two days before was long gone and they expected the one we bought to be sold the next day. My neighbor trad…

Why are dealer market adjustments ridiculous? We live and breathe market forces. No one ever, ever, complains about market adjustments in their favor.

It’s the opposite:

Normal market: “this product costs $2.60.”

‘Wasn’t it like, $2.10 a week ago?’

“Yes it was.”

Cars:

“This car is $26k. Oh, also you have to pay a $2k market adjustment, because man things are just crazy.”

That is, in normal markets, you just raise the price, you don’t need to refer to an explicit “market adjustment”, especially not as a random addon.

Re: Used car market gets even more bizarre

#138

Post by OnlineGladiator »

noduerme wrote: post #129
NDizzle wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will the insanity pass, though? There's talk of putting cameras in all cars starting in 2026 to prevent... drunk driving[1]?! What's next? I can't be alone in never buying a car that has this feature. [1] https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-11-09/congre...

I still won't even buy a car with GPS. Seems I'm in a vanishing minority. It won't pass, because people born after 1990 have spent their adult lives in a world with surveillance machines in their pockets at all times. Their cars are just big phones. By 2040 you probably won't even be allowed to drive your own vehicle.

GPS is a one-way communication. It's really no different from radio in that regard (a signal sent from far away and you have an antenna to read the signal). Unless there's also a cellular modem in your car (which pretty much every modern car has today so I'm not pretending this is unusual) it's impossible for others to monitor your location. You can simply disable the cellular modem and enjoy using GPS without anyone else knowing where you are.

Also, those cellular modems in cars tend to use older technology (this is fairly standard for the auto industry in general since there is such a long regulatory approval process for anything). My 2018 model year car will no longer be able to communicate remotely in January 2022 because the cellular network is being deprecated.

Re: Used car market gets even more bizarre

#139

Post by latortuga »

larrydag wrote: post #4

Here's the flip side of that from auto lenders. They are seeing a huge recovery benefit from repossession of vehicle after chargeoff. Lenders portfolios are seeing a net benefit in chargeoffs which has hardly ever happened in recent history. Even more bizarre. https://www.yahoo.com/now/ally-financial-ally-beats-q3-12451...

Another flip side effect. My dad is a CFO at a car dealership and tells me that the banks are having problems due to the lack of cars as well. A dealership will normally float all their inventory on a big bank note but they basically have no cars on the lot to sell which means the banks underwriting those notes are making no money on interest. Multiply it by thousands of dealerships nationwide and this has big impacts on revenue to those banks.

Re: Used car market gets even more bizarre

#140

Post by mead5432 »

neogodless wrote: post #108

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…

My wife was in a similar position. 2013 Mazda 3 base trim. She was going to sell it early 2020 because we didn't need the second car and KBB said ~$4k.

We decided to actually get rid of it last weekend and KBB said $6500-$7500 for trade-in. There were some cosmetic issues with it so figured we'd be on the low end. Not wanting to deal with posting it to craigslist and coordinate visits, we asked if the dealership would purchase it. They offered us $6k so reasonably close.

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