My $2,000 cars include:

Yep. The 3.5 is a great engine. I’m not happy with the sealed transmission, makes fluid changes a bitch... but it’s smooth. I made sure to get the non-nav model so I can swap in a carplay/AA deck. It’ll serve me well.

If they have the money to afford it, they wouldn’t be pushing to 84 months.

Good pick up.  That will last far longer than a year or two.  130k miles is not even broken in on one of those.

I picked this up for my friends 16yo daughter last month. 101k miles, no repairs needed, $2,800.

And lots of people could afford to save if they cut back on unnecessary spending.

I just picked this up for under $5k.

Especially since cars are more reliable than ever. Even at 10 years most are perfectly fine.

The solution around that is to spend only money you’ve saved on a used car.

Look, I’m the damn posterchild for buying shiny new stuff-including cars-

And when you factor in ALL car-related costs (fuel, insurance, maintenance, repairs, upgrades, registration/taxes, tickets/fines, depreciation), there’s a good chance people are spending at least double that on average.

You’re asking people to make smart, informed decisions about financing and large purchases?! People should take personal responsibility for their financial decisions?! Craziness.

Retired FCA guy here. I once spent 6 weeks driving around the Midwest launching the Caliber to our dealers via presenting a half day training module to the entire dealer staff on the showroom floor.

It took real talent to come up with such a gangly, awkward design like this and see it through to production. I blame many people...

This post is gold! The 4Runner is such a great example. High mileage first gens are selling for larger sums than many of its newer, lower mileage siblings.

As the person who’s low mile car has 142,000 miles and my high mileage one is over 300k I can attest that the main thing that makes it difficult to keep them going is stuff that is unrelated to the mechanical wear and tear. its leather age, its plastic brittleness, its wire stiffness, etc etc. AGE related stuff, not…

Hey David, since these seem to be getting worse year after year, I think I have a suggestion for next year’s Moab build:

This is what Jalopnik is supposed to be.

I actually worked with one of the engineers who was involved with the Quad4 program, unfortunately he died a few years ago. Was a really smart guy, he loved talking about how fun and interesting the Quad4 project was at the time.