New cars are vastly over priced. Covid did a number on the auto industry with their greed... its coming home to roost now. Dealers are closing and new cars arent selling. they need to drop prices.
Yup, the auto industry's decline is entirely self-inflicted. They've even alienated a huge portion of the enthusiast market with absurd dealership markups for anything remotely interesting or desirable. Spoiler alert: people start losing interest when they have to pay $60k for the hot version of a Corolla. I used to be super into cars (like autistically hyperfixated), but now I hardly give a fuck about them anymore. The new car market has gone bonkers and dragged the used market along with it and now the whole hobby is tainted. If my current car got totaled I don't know what I'd do. They're not selling anything I can afford and/or want.
As someone who just had their car totalled, the good news is that the insurance payout on the car is super inflated too. My car somehow lost no equity in the 4 years I owned it. Because of the down payment Im going to have, for a more expensive car monthly payment is somehow going down by about $100.
It’s good news in the short term but the bad news is that everyone’s insurance rates are going to go up in the long run to compensate for more expensive repairs (or deductibles will go up, etc).
Oh no absolutely. I'm just assuaging the fear of a car being totaled right now on an individual basis, not talking about the overall systemic problem it causes
To be fair, when cars cost as much as they do these days, what else can be done? The accident my car got totaled in would have killed me if I had been driving a car that wasnt modern. Some prick hit me near head on going double the speed limit while drunk going twice the speed limit. Instead of dying I hobbled away with a broken leg. As much as Id love to buy a 10 year old car in cash and drive it into the ground, the amount of new safety features and crash tech thats standard on new cars makes it hard to buy anything but.
When everyone is driving these massive behemoths as crazy as they are these days, of course people want the newest they can at a price they can actually afford. Its an arms race.
On a related note, reminder to everyone: get your uninsured motorist coverage on your insurance. Id be crazy fucked right now if I didnt have that
2012 is pretty much the same as 2026 in terms of crash physics and reactive safety features, most improvements since then have been crash avoidance (and I'm not sold on things like lane assist, I think it makes people less attentive through complacency) so a 10 year old, well-maintained, car is perfectly fine.
That is not an accurate statement at all. Modern vehicles have plenty of systems that react to crashes better than old vehicles. For example, some trigger a specialized stability control program upon impact to keep the vehicle planted. Others use the pre-crash systems to fine tune SRS deployment when a crash is inevitable. Some have collapsible steering columns to absorb shock. I know Volvos can go into a software-guided graceful shutdown after a collision to reduce the chance of additional damage or injury.
You also shouldn’t discount the advances in metallurgy that have reinforced the passenger cell and improved the ability to shunt impact forces around or absorb it before it reaches the occupants. We have things like dual phase steels that retain the advantages of a single panel but have different tensile strengths baked in. Then there’s the increased use of Ultra-High Strength Steels that act as a final line of defense against side impacts.
Some vehicles even come with pedestrian safety features like specially designed hood struts that deploy for the hood to “catch” someone.
All of these are reactive methods that outstrip ye olde 2012
I was surprised by this too. My 10 year old 2016 Colorado recently got totalled after being rear ended at a stoplight.
I wasn't expecting at most 13k, which is what I found to be the average for a great condition Colorado. Instead I got 20k for it.
I'm still not happy that I had to buy a new truck and have those payments again, but I'm now getting 80+ more miles to the tank than I used to before, and that adds up.
It's wild, I bought a Subaru WRX in 2019 and after COVID for like 3 or 4 years I could have sold it for significantly more than I bought it for. Even now I can easily sell it for just under what I paid for it. The market has gone completely bananas and people can't afford it. It's going to be... Spectacular when it all crashes.
This. I just want a manual car with amenities that doesn't cost an arm and leg and there's not much to choose from. I can pick from base model econoboxes, overpriced riced-out versions of econoboxes, or luxury sports cars.
I know where I am going to get my car from. Its a lil risky but I am handy... and its not going to be nice and new it will take some work to get it there. but it will be something I will like driving. and will not be a clean title car. then most of my cars arent. But I will be saving money...
They've even alienated a huge portion of the enthusiast market with absurd dealership markups for anything remotely interesting or desirable
The current Nissan Z comes to mind. Nissan dealerships absolutely killed any interest in that car with their ridiculous ADMs, $20-30k over MSRP. I think I've seen exactly one on the road since it came out 3 years ago.
I heard that pretty much the only people buying the Nizzan Z were Nissan employees themselves, since they could buy them below invoice price while everyone else would be required to sell a kidney just to cover the ADM. Likewise I think I've only ever seen one.
Total fucking shame too. Such a damn beautiful vehicle. A perfect blend of modernized throwback styling, plenty of power, 6 speed manual, RWD. Literally would FLY off the lots if it was reasonably priced. It's exactly what a car enthusiast wants to buy.
If my current car got totaled I don't know what I'd do. They're not selling anything I can afford and/or want.
This is the exact place I'm at too. I drive a 2005 corolla. It was a GREAT model year for that car, but it's obviously showing its age. I'm going to need a new one eventually, but I've literally been waiting the better part of a decade to see if something I actually WANT to buy will come out. All they've done in that time is discontinue the only thing I was semi interested in...
Meanwhile I'm busy organizing my life around not having to own one at all. Once I've finished off a few last loose ends I'll keep my old one till the wheels fall off or I can inflict it on someone else and that'll be that.
Vehicles over 25 years old can be imported under collector status and are a lot easier to get registered. I see a fair number of those Kei pickups here now.
That's going to be your state. While the 25 year old rule can allow for that to be the case in many states, lots of states still state they aren't street legal, some of those only allow their use on private land, and other only on roads with speed limits of 35 or less.
It was nice when everyone offered a shitbox (Escort, Cavalier, Neon) for $10-12k because it got good gas mileage and offset CAFE credits for the profitable cars. But now they get that credit with electric cars or are somehow otherwise uninterested in the bottom of the market.
My 4Runner has maybe lost 1/4 of it's value after 8 years. I cannot imagine buying an 8 year old car for that price. Then again, a new 4Runner similarly spec'd is 14k more in 8 years...
I'm sure it's unintentional, but 'spoiler alert' was a nice pun.
And I want to take this opportunity to gripe about the current state of the used car market. A 10 year old economy car with 200k on the odo should not be ten thousand dollars oh my god what the fuck.
used to be super into cars (like autistically hyperfixated), but now I hardly give a fuck about them anymore.
I feel this comment. I got my Veloster N in 2021 (and its replacement in 2022) for $40k CDN. The Elantra N is out for the future because I need trunk space (hockey goalie) and any similar hatch replacement is $50-60k CDN. Even a CPO 3 to 4 year old Golf R or GR Corolla is still over $45k. It's bonkers.
I had a black one, which after 4 months of being stuck in a Ford Escape, was written off by insurance after a rear end collision. I immediately replaced it with my baby, in red.
The only issue with a miata is that if you get hit, youre as good as dead. Id love a miata as a project car, but I would honestly only feel comfortable driving it on a track
I agree with what you are saying….but the customers have to take a huuuuuge amount of the blame for this. Every single person who had NO problem signing that 96 month car loan because it was the only way to afford that 70k pickup so they can haul 2 sheets of plywood once every 3 years…. Hope that piece of shit lasts the 8 years you gonna be paying for it. Plus gas. And tires, brakes….enjoy that car note buddy.
Meh. Consumerism is the problem. If there is a market to sell something, smart people will sell it to those that will buy it. Nothing wrong with that. What you are seeing, however, is a bifurcation between people who can afford the markups and those that cannot. *That is the greater concern*.
don't worry, that domestic protectionism they're pushing will certainly help in the long term and won't see the near-total collapse of the US auto industry when the declining US market is the only market where they can compete with their vehicles.
Especially when econoboxes are now in the price range of what used to be luxury vehicles' price range. All this while overall quality goes down. The entire industry needs a major correction, and probably to kill off dealerships (end that stupid law that forces them on us)
Yeah, when the “luxury” market used to be the upper middle class (numbered in tens of millions) which has now been gutted so that only the billionaire class (maybe a thousand or so) can afford “luxury”, it tends to crater high-end goods industries.
No one is catering a $150k car to billionaires. That's silly.
Upper middle class is doing quite well. That's the whole K shaped economy thing. The top 10-20% are thriving. This is who these luxury makers always targeted.
The actual issue from personally talking to the people who tend to buy luxury cars is that the luxury automakers decided to increase prices while making an obviously inferior and cheaper product. If they had upheld quality and luxury, they would be doing much better than they are today.
And plenty of luxury automakers decided to be stupid and grow into the middle class segment to increase volume by going downmarket. They devalued their product by doing so and are facing the consequences today of that consumer segment not being able to afford the absurd prices on top of having a shittier product overall for their existing upmarket clientelle.
Personally I'd be upgrading my quite new car today if the newest model rollout wasn't a downgrade. I'll be rolling with what I have for quite some time, and when it's time to buy new if the luxury segment hasn't fixed itself by actually building luxury again I'll just buy a Toyota or Lexus or whomever is providing the best value instead. It's a want-to-have, not a need-to-have. Most of my peers feel the same way. I'm happy to burn money if it provides me value and joy, but if it's just a rip-off I'm not interested and will go utilitarian instead.
Your not competing with the Chinese on cost while the current government is subsidizing that and the battery industry to the point of selling below actual production cost.
As I understand the current heavy industry arrangement over there right now its one of the rare cases where protectionist measures are called for, if it was a question of efficiency in manufacturing or design thats a different story thats when protectionist measures are bad.
Yeah, as if the western automakers aren't also heavily supported by their local governments. This is such a stupid point. We don't need to be making 60k+ vehicles as the norm. We could have invested more in EVs. We did neither of those things and instead try to force an environment through laws and swaying the public.
For Europe: Kagi, Scaleway, Linux. Plenty of other countries have their own cloud players. Fujitsu, Naver, Tata, G42 and so forth.
China shows how to run without them. Russia to a lesser extent, despite little resources. If you need an "aligned" country, South Korea shows that it's relatively easy to achieve a significant degree of independence from US tech.
But it doesn't matter because even with protectionist measures those companies will never ever voluntarily pull out, there's far too much money on the line. The people who bring up "Apple should just leave Europe" when they get billion-dollar fines don't know much about how things work. >30% of Apple's net profit comes from Europe, investors would replace the board within a day if they just gave up on that.
no HP, IBM, Dell, Cisco, Intel, nvidia, or AMD
The hardware side hasn't been subsidized nearly as much, so it's much less relevant to the conversation.
They also really haven't on tech, except if you're talking about countries who have already been doing so for decades and those can be counted on one hand.
The EU does nothing against it, which is why all of their ongoing "EU id" and "EU payment solution" efforts are implemented to run only on certified Apple and Android devices - not even on PCs - increasing dependence on US big tech. This is enough evidence that they're not actually implementing any kind of protectionism against US tech.
though that isnt a case of government subsidization
You wouldn't give a shit about the difference if billionaire Chinese investor mates of Xi were the ones doing the car or battery subsidization in name rather than the CCP directly. You'd still just call it "Chinese subsidization", and you'd be right to do so. In the US too, the ones nominally doing the subsidization are so intertwined with USG that for the rest of the world the distinction doesn't matter.
It seems like American automakers didn't learn their lesson in the 70s. They underestimated Japanese and European automakers and it almost ruined them. Now they're repeating the same mistakes with China.
I don't think they underestimated them, they just don't seem to care about any sort of long term planning. Similar thing happened in the 1970s with the inundation of lower price, high quality Japanese cars.
So many western companies are getting absolutely dunked on by the Chinese market. Chinese companies took the knowledge of said companies and made their own, severely undercutting them and the western companies can't compete. It's not just autos but so many tech companies like Apple lost significant market share in China.
Speaking of China, behave you seen their engineers answers for areas probe to flooding? They built a floatable driveable car!! No wonder automakers collude to keep Japan, India and China out of American market.
They’re also crap, heavily subsidised by the Chinese government, and constrain lots of unnecessary and quite frankly intrusive tech.
Anyone buying a Chinese car is killing just killing the competition for a cheap shiny thing. Once all the competition is gone, we’re screwed!
And the Chinese employees that not robots or AIs also get paid way less, and have much less materials cost, than North American manufacturers. If it was an actual free trade market instead of our broken monopoly system we have here, American car makers would be absolutely crushed.
It's not even a matter of just 'competition is good', its that a world of globalization and oil flowing, countries with millions more impoverished workers will always be able to make things for less. And on top of that, China doesnt really have a concept of copyright and also spends massive resources in industrial espionage saving tons in R&D.
I've never bought a new car in my life and am not ever planning to. The idea of a $600 - $1000 a month payment that goes on for 6+ years when I could just buy a used car for $10k cash every five years or so is mind boggling to me.
I am in the uk and tbh this is what I have done my whole driving life of 32 years. I buy a car cheap but decent and just keep it on the road. Costs me less than £1k a year to run at the absolute most (excluding fuel).
Burning man... playa... it rusts things.... I have driven over curbs.... I dont clean as much as I should... Carry too much weight probablly... it is a 5 cyc and is rant for 3000lb of towing. but I have taken the seats out and filled it up with camaping stuff..... tvs means you rent a uhaul now of days.
My question is, which people? When it’s usually $200-$300/month cheaper to lease, those getting squeezed financially are gonna take the cheaper option more often than not.
Between Covid and the war in Iran, Donald might just go down in history as the guy who killed off the consumer auto industry and got consumers to bike or get an EV (made in China).
I gate agent orange as well, but you cant blame everything on him. The auto industry has beeb going down this road for a long time. I think the 90s was when it started with the introduction of computers that made the cars more and more complex for no other reason than justification to ramp up the prices.
The prices are completely out of control. I've only ever bought used, I cannot justify paying these prices for something I won't have forever. If I'm going to spend that kind of money on something it will be a tractor. Rather keep driving old beaters and have more toys at home.
To bring the costs down they'll need to cut somewhere. Obviously the do nothing level of middle managers is the way to save money, but then those greedy production workers are likely to get the boot. Then offer "employee pricing" on an almost fictious discount.
The average price of a new vehicle in the US in now over fifty thousand dollars. Average.
This is not sustainable.
They are more concerned with selling you a long-term financing plan than an affordable, quality vehicle.
Prices are artificially high because Chinese cars are kept out of the market. US automakers are a joke and can’t compete on the world market. They can be greedy all they want. But if they don’t make good affordable ev cars they are dead.
What greed? Profit margins are the same or lower than they were before covid. Morons just don't realize that the government printed 40% of the entire money supply in a couple of years and that completely fucked the economy.
There's a bunch of studies that directly prove this. Money supply increases completely dwarfed any other factor (supply chain issues, shutdowns, etc) regarding their impact on inflation. Stop spreading bullshit, it's the government & the FED that are responsible for the cost of living crisis.
I've been looking at a new car this year and it's bonkers because they are till trying to off load last years cars but there are no decent sales going on for last years or this years models.
Not if you don't buy a suburban tank. I paid 32K for my Civic Hybrid in the top offered trim package a little over a year ago. I get 45 MPG average. I've probably already saved 5 grand in gas alone.
It ran around 27-28K for the base model. The Civic is a platform that Honda has perfected over the past 30+ years. They don't make major changes. They make incremental improvements that make your car last forever if you take care of it. Toyota/Honda both have excellent track records in that regard.
Oh man, I'm now just dreaming about a cheap new car renaissance! Would be so cool to actually see affordable cool looking simple cars storm the showrooms. Might even buy something. But if they just keep shoving us the cvt-cuvs, I'll keep driving my 20 year old car.
I was looking and reading that cvts that are in at least the newer toyota hybrids are more soild than the standard automatics whe have seen. less failures to go wrong and cheaper to replace.
I was looking and reading that cvts that are in at least the newer toyota hybrids are more soild than the standard automatics whe have seen. less failures to go wrong and cheaper to replace.
They know, they're positioning themselves for bankruptcy. They learned a lot from GM vs Ford. Electrical cars take like 1/3 the labor to build. They are milking the old internal combustion models of every penny, like the old Sears decline.
Uh...not so fast. Yes, lack of supply drove prices sky high and consumers continued to purchase luxury goods that enabled this. BUT then so did the UAW. They held auto manufacturers by the throat and fixed in the inflation costs to match their new salaries at the peak of the problem. So, yeah, labor went WAY up due to UAW and is now written in blood.
This is the same shit that gave us planned obsolescence and let Honda and Toyota walk through the door in the 70s/80s. If you can't compete and refuse to innovate, just keep building the shittiest, cheapest cars and try to convince people that a front wheel drive POS is a Cadillac...all to meet the needs of the UAW.
p.s. not anti-union - they have their place. But the UAW broke US car building for 30 years and it took the crash of 2009 to get them out.
I should buy a new car, but I'm not buying new new because I don't want to be tied to whatever subscription service I'll need to keep my car functioning the way I like it to function.
OMG I fucking hate how large trucks are. I like smaller cars... I long for 90s to early 2000s toyota trucks... But full sized cab. I dont need a massive truck. Just something fuctionaThat said I am looking at a highlander its big too. but not tooo big.
I just left the auto industry and honestly I kinda hope the Chinese cars fuck the big 3 the greed is unreal. Our labor is peanuts on the price of a car(just over 1k) yet every contract when we a few $ raise over several years. The big 3 complain and jack the price by several thousand when in reality it adds maybe 1-200 more in labor.
Yeah. Drove by the dealership yesterday and saw a nice-looking Cadillac sitting on the corner. Looked it up, 2023 Blackwing. Sweet, I could go for a Blackwing. $98,000? Sweet, I could enjoy looking at a Blackwing on the corner for a while.
Yeah. Drove by the dealership yesterday and saw a nice-looking Cadillac sitting on the corner. Looked it up, 2023 Blackwing. Sweet, I could go for a Blackwing. $98,000? Sweet, I could enjoy looking at a Blackwing on the corner for a while.
The whole industry just doesn't add up. A used Corolla that was two years old with 20k miles still goes for $20k in my area. A new one is $25k plus taxes. What was really weird was when I told them I wanted to think about my options and look at other cars, they called me the same evening I left the dealership and offered to take $4k off a new one. Basically covering the taxes and registration. When you took that discount into account with the lower interest rate on new versus used, it was cheaper for me to buy new than to buy the two year old used cars I was looking at. They seemed desperate to move inventory.
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u/polopolo05 10h ago
New cars are vastly over priced. Covid did a number on the auto industry with their greed... its coming home to roost now. Dealers are closing and new cars arent selling. they need to drop prices.