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The $25k car is going extinct?

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Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#421

Post by sofixa »

matthewowen wrote: post #388
sofixa wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also Europeans make less money, pay more taxes, and have less access to credit, so they can’t afford more expensive cars like many Americans Funnily your last point invalidates your first. Most Americans are loaded on debt, which impacts how much actual money they have left over at the end of the month. How many Americans can't stomach a $1000 surprise bill again? > Isn’t your argument basically saying that people…

> GDP per capita doesn't mean what you think it does. Everything being overpriced in the US, and everything needing to have a middleman inflates GDP figures. Take health insurance, Americans pay multiple times what Europeans pay, to stuff the pockets of multiple for profit institutions and middlemen. GDP figures look better in the US, but really, which way is more efficient? Health outcomes are better across the EU,…

> You don't need recourse to GDP, you can just look at household income which really is higher.

Income would include the money being immediately spent to cover debt (be it student loans, mortgage, medical, car).

> Most things do _not_ actually have inflated prices relative to European countries

I'm struggling to think of things which aren't inflated. Only one I can come up with is gas/petrol/fuel, because there are much less taxes on it. Everything else I can think of is more expensive in the US - healthcare, transportation, food (groceries, and absurdly so for restaurants, for worse quality at that), various types of recreation (cinema, theatre, netflix and co, cable, watching live sports, concerts) internet, phone bills. Electricity is way too location dependent so I'll skip that one.

> But that doesn't invalidate "people have more money available to spend on cars and easier access to credit to finance that purchase over five years at favorable interest rates" as part of the reason why Americans choose to spend more money on cars.

Are interest rates favourable? There are multiple concerning trends (like car payments being one of the top household expenses and people struggling with that, people owing more on car loans than what the vehicle is worth, etc. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/15/american-consumers-are-incre... )

> You really don't have to take every point of discussion of difference between the US and European countries as an obligation to rant about how much better Europe is on tangential topics.

I'm not ranting, I'm correcting a wrong comparison using a wrong metric incorrectly. I don't know what is it with Americans reassuring themselves with GDP metrics, but it's very confusing why anyone would throw in GDP numbers when talking about disposable income and the car market.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#422

Post by BanterTrouble »

LightBug1 wrote: post #406
BanterTrouble wrote: post #382

I work on my own cars now (as a hobby really) and one of the reasons the new cars are so expensive is they are much more complicated. A lot of this seems to be over-engineering IMO. This is alluded to in the article, but not explicitly stated. The cars I work on are from the early 90s and everything is very simple to understand. e.g. Electronics are normally simple circuits that aren't much more complicated than what…

Same ... I'm still running an early 2000's Toyota and got myself a VW Beetle 1969 just for the fun of it ... love maintaining them as they're so simple and rewarding and parts are cheap! ... And I can in no way be called a mechanic. I've been lusting over the ioniq 5 for a couple of years but I'm just thinking, in 10 years time I'll be knee deep in your last paragraph ... I like long lasting cars

Yep. There a bunch of minor issues with my vehicle that I was procrastinating on, but the brakes lights not working is very illegal and unsafe, so that had to be fixed before I drove it. Was really pleased once I realised what the issue and managed to fix it.

All the newer cars feel like iPods with wheels and the driving experience is horrible. I am not interested in them.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#423

Post by kleiba »

logifail wrote: post #411

$25k ?! The last car I bought cost just less than $12k USD new ( on the road including all taxes and fees) around 5 years ago. I know inflation's been high, but not it's not been that high.

> around 5 years ago

The article is specifically about the price increase in the last 6 years.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#424

Post by BanterTrouble »

aembleton wrote: post #420
BanterTrouble wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in the UK. Cars aren't that cheap (at least for something half decent), labour costs are dependant on what is being done. While the roads do get salted, rust is more dependant on the vehicle model. Also there are preventative measures you can take that aren't that expensive again rust.

I found this video informative about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjMyx24pxTo He's a second hand car dealer in Stockport and has experience of selling cars in Spain and in California.

I will watch tonight. I used to live in Spain. Buying a vehicle there is weird.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#425

Post by potato3732842 »

puzzlingcaptcha wrote: post #261

You can still buy a new subcompact car (like a Renault Clio or Skoda Fabia) in Europe for under 20k EUR. The more interesting question is why these cars disappeared in the US. And while many of the factors discussed here are true for both EU and US (inflation, interest rates, manufacturer profit margins etc) I am surprised no one mentioned the 'SUV loophole' of US regulations that effectively boosted the SUVs (off-ro…

What a counterproductive comment in a world where the average SUV is something a lot closer in qualities to a traditional car than a traditional SUV.

Ford's linup is a great example how you people harping on SUVs actively detract from the discussion. What you call the Flex, the Ecosport and the C-max doesn't really matter. They're obviously by virtue of their attributes much closer to a "car" than they are to a traditional truck-ish SUV.

Every OEM's lineup has examples of this (Honda Crosstour anyone?).

The OEMs could make these things very cheaply if they wanted, look at the Maverick, a brand new model debuting at 25k. But they don't, why?

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#426

Post by madduci »

paganel wrote: post #349
puzzlingcaptcha wrote: post #261

You can still buy a new subcompact car (like a Renault Clio or Skoda Fabia) in Europe for under 20k EUR. The more interesting question is why these cars disappeared in the US. And while many of the factors discussed here are true for both EU and US (inflation, interest rates, manufacturer profit margins etc) I am surprised no one mentioned the 'SUV loophole' of US regulations that effectively boosted the SUVs (off-ro…

> You can still buy a new subcompact car (like a Renault Clio or Skoda Fabia) in Europe for under 20k EUR. They're also on their out around these parts, very unfortunately.

Fiat has just announced and produced the Panda, which is also a cheap vehicle. Also the Tipo was very cheap (15-20k) and Dacia makes also cheap, but good cars.

I still don't understand the urge in the US to own a Truck at any cost

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#427

Post by darkwizard42 »

gmac wrote: post #351
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My reptilian-brain logic prevents me from even considering getting a loan for car. Houses increase in value, therefore it makes a certain amount of sense to get a loan / mortgage for the purchase of a house (but mainly because no-one - in the world in which I live - can afford to buy one cash). Cars decrease in value, very quickly. Getting a loan for a car is throwing more money away than buying a car in the first pl…

Getting a loan for a car seems quite natural to me. A car provides service flows over a long period, so why not pay for it over a similarly long period? In the first year or two the car's value is probably below the outstanding loan amount, but beyond that it's likely to rise above it, so you're free to sell and walk away from the arrangement. Granted, high interest rates might make this a bad deal, but the principle…

Given that the car drops nearly 50% value as it leaves the lot, I'm not sure how this every pencils out before maybe 10 years 100k+ miles...Maybe these days given how hot the used car market is (driven by the expensive nature of newer vehicles), but again this is a chicken/egg problem.

Your loan is exceedingly abnormal or from a past time as the average loan % in the US is much higher on that time scale.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#428

Post by kleiba »

I'm not about this whole discussion - go to your favorite car sales website and filter for new cars and, say, 20,000 Euros. I see roughly 7000 cars for sale in Germany on mobile.de - of course, a lot of them will be instances of the same type of car, but there is variety and offers from multiple brands, both international and European.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#429

Post by AnthonyMouse »

puzzlingcaptcha wrote: post #261

You can still buy a new subcompact car (like a Renault Clio or Skoda Fabia) in Europe for under 20k EUR. The more interesting question is why these cars disappeared in the US. And while many of the factors discussed here are true for both EU and US (inflation, interest rates, manufacturer profit margins etc) I am surprised no one mentioned the 'SUV loophole' of US regulations that effectively boosted the SUVs (off-ro…

> I am surprised no one mentioned the 'SUV loophole' of US regulations that effectively boosted the SUVs (off-road vehicles are classified as non-passenger automobiles with everything that entails, notably much less stringent emission standards) and made the small cars unprofitable to make in comparison.

This has become the irrelevant part because "does it have an electric motor in the powertrain" has become more important to fuel economy than vehicle size. There are hybrid SUVs that get better MPG than non-hybrid sedans, to say nothing of the full electric ones.

Which is another reason the average price is increasing. Hybrids have a lower TCO even though they have a higher initial purchase price. People who can do the math realize that paying more up front for a hybrid or full electric is paying less long-term. But then the market for lower priced new cars declines, because the people who can afford a new car can afford to pay a little extra for long-term savings and most of the people who can't afford to do that were buying used to begin with.

Re: The $25k car is going extinct?

#430

Post by Neikius »

BanterTrouble wrote: post #382

I work on my own cars now (as a hobby really) and one of the reasons the new cars are so expensive is they are much more complicated. A lot of this seems to be over-engineering IMO. This is alluded to in the article, but not explicitly stated. The cars I work on are from the early 90s and everything is very simple to understand. e.g. Electronics are normally simple circuits that aren't much more complicated than what…

Fully agree with what you are saying.

I do have some beef with the prices of these electronic gadgets in the car. 300€ price for a new sensor or something similar? Sensor costs are usually a single digit or below. Somehow vendors found a way to inflate that price and this is destroying the repairability.

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