Audi R8 oil change instructions:

Inflation is a b****

Right. Then some regulations happened and lessons were learned. “It happened before so its gonna happen again” is an oversimplification to the point of meaningless. I almost feel like Jalops WANT a big financial collapse to happen again just to punish all the people they don’t like (rich and by extension evil finance…

Again don’t move the goal posts. If a $20K used car is affordable then so is a $20K new car. Whether one is a better deal than the other is totally irrelevant, especially considering most people keep their cars for damn near a decade. 

The average transaction price is kind of irrelevant IMO. Who cares what some strangers are paying for their cars? All that matters is what’s available, and there is a shitload of affordable cars to buy. If we could see the distribution of ATPs it would be a big hump under the average with a long skinny tail.

Cars are also more durable than ever; the average age of cars on the road keeps increasing. I see a small dip coming with CVT failures but overall the long loans are justified by better durability and longer ownership lengths.

Actually people are keeping their cars longer than ever... a few years longer than the scarily long loans

Total non-sequitur. Used cars have always been cheaper than new cars. My point is that the majority of new cars sold are far from unaffordable. Most of the top sellers in the US are well below the average that makes Jalops clutch their pearls. If you want a new car you don’t have to pay $35K

There is a lot of info and evidence pointing to the former, but the FUD loving Jalopnik hivemind would rather believe the latter.

Thankfully it is abated. Lenders aren’t in the business of losing money, especially after the last financial crisis.

It seems the people crying about cars being so expensive have no idea how much they all cost, which to me seems like a bigger problem. Most compact cars (Civic, Corolla, Forte etc) start under $20K MSRP, and are even cheaper with incentives. Subcompacts like the Versa and Fit are even cheaper.

There are still p-l-e-n-t-y of affordable new cars. Don’t let the choices people are making fool you into thinking a $20K compact doesn’t exist.

These things are still hideous and seemingly needlessly wide. Wish they had a simpler design like a modern Morgan 3 wheeler.

4th- Harley needs to become the American Ducati with an emphasis on a Scrambler sub brand. They should get on board with a 90 degree V too. It just makes sense.

Both of these statements are true.

Indeed... when you are free from the shackles of reliability and practicality you can achieve full automotive artistic potential. There is a long list of cars that are much nicer to look at than be financially responsible for:

Amazing interior, awful exterior. Design is the only meaningful differentiator in this class and they kind of blew it. Hopefully they clean up the GV70. All this time with no SUV.... coupled with the awesome Telluride... this thing’s gonna have a hard time.

I don’t understand this austerity fetish. I don’t know how much this thing is gonna cost but I can’t imagine it will be anywhere near cheap enough to justify the huge performance and range downgrade from a Bolt/Model 3.

I’d much rather have stricter enforcement of lane discipline than pretty much anything else. I think that, phone use, drunk driving and lack of overall traffic law enforcement on highways sum up our highway driving problems when traffic is moving at speed.

What it will take to get Michigan drivers to chill out a little and learn to drive just 75 is still anyone’s guess.