241–250 of 1001 posts
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One thing that throws me off even after a decade in Finland is people saying “we are ready” or “you are ready” when they mean “done”.
Dinner is ready when it is done. I'm sure there are others in English as well.
Last year we bought a car. While not being a petrol head I was still living in a lala land where you could buy a brand new car for 10k EUR. Nothing fancy, just "a car". Obviously it turned out to be not true. After some digging it turned out that in the last 10 years the price of cars went double. Literally double. Same car, like Fiat Panda, with the same engine and configuration, that ten years was worth one potato…
I don't know why inflation is dismissed so quickly. The article lists the industry average price increase as 29.2% and the inflation value I got out of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics calculator[1] was 26.2%. So sure, "this isn’t just a case of inflation affecting the entire vehicle market" [emphasis mine], but it is mostly that. [1] - https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm
Retail inflation is based on the prices of goods, including new cars. So it's pointless to compare car prices to inflation because they are part of the basis of the measure. Hence why they track closely.
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Retail inflation is based on the prices of goods, including new cars. So it's pointless to compare car prices to inflation because they are part of the basis of the measure. Hence why they track closely.
Then it’s pointless to compare nearly anything to inflation, which means inflation isn’t very useful. You can still find many product categories increasing in price more slowly than inflation. Some much higher than inflation. So it is useful to compare inflation
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When, as the article says, the $25k car is going extinct, I do blame manufacturers and banks (and the dealerships).
Almost all cars have turbos, all have abs/airbags/cameras... even counting the seat foam & covers, wheels, door cars... how cheap do you think a vehicle safe and comfortable for humans can be? The average car has tons of moving parts that have to be weatherproof, shakeproof, pothole-ready... stuff consumer tech doesn't dream of. It also has to be repairable, be engineered to meet all the regulations in various countr…
Last year we bought a car. While not being a petrol head I was still living in a lala land where you could buy a brand new car for 10k EUR. Nothing fancy, just "a car". Obviously it turned out to be not true. After some digging it turned out that in the last 10 years the price of cars went double. Literally double. Same car, like Fiat Panda, with the same engine and configuration, that ten years was worth one potato…
On the other hand you could have bought a mint condition E30 late model for $10k euro.
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Because they are buying new and financing it
Well, the used car market has also been decimated Cash For Clunkers took a ton of used vehicles off the market Stricter environmental standards have also taken otherwise working cars off the market, by preventing used dealerships from selling them in general, and making it more difficult/more expensive to insure them The days of buying a used car for 2 grand are long gone
in 2021 my beloved Honda Fit got totaled. I bought it new in 09 and only had 80K miles on it. They don't sell new ones in North America any more. So I bought a Kia Rio. They don't make those any more. I don't really like it but with the current chaos in the economy I'm not trading it in any time soon. I was in the UK for the first time last month and was struck by how many hatchbacks and sedans they have that we don'…
The second hand market isn't great because we stopped making cars during Covid so there is a dearth of four/five year old models.
The only light at the end of the tunnel is EV's are now comparable to their ICE equivalents price wise.
One fact not mentioned in the article - Americans now owe $1.64 trillion in auto loans, and cars make up 9% of all consumer debt in the country. In fact we now owe more on cars than student loans. The average loan term is rising - almost 6 years now. 60-day delinquency on auto loans is at 6.6%, the highest ever recorded, and is as high as 9% in some states. So while car prices keep going up, people also keep going de…
Sure, status is a factor. But for people who do a lot of driving, having a nice car really benefits their quality of life. No one wants to spend hours every day in a miserable little penalty box.
Cars must be the textbook case of Stockholm syndrome. People keep buying Audi/BMW/Mercedes and European cars in general for god knows what reason (even though when they inevitably need service, it is always an expensive nightmare, among other big problems), they buy stuff that is functionally useless and stupid looking like CUVs (many of which which have less interior room than a Camry, burn more fuel and still ride and drive like ass), and have caused the market for full size body on frame trucks to turn completely on its head (hard to find anything other than pavement queen king ranch doodoo trucks that will cost you at least your first born son). This whole "it's shit if I don't pay a huge premium, and it's shit if it's not huge and loaded to the gills with useless shit you're never actually going to miss or use but will cost a small country's GDP to even flash to pair up when you need to R&R" is something that's probably one of life's great mysteries to me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then it’s pointless to compare nearly anything to inflation, which means inflation isn’t very useful. You can still find many product categories increasing in price more slowly than inflation. Some much higher than inflation. So it is useful to compare inflation
But the question we're asking is why the price of cars went up. "Inflation" isn't an answer. Inflation is what we call the price of cars going up. It still happens for a reason...